Ruza wenclawska biography definition

American trade union organizer paramount suffragist (1889-1934)

Ruza Wenclawska (December 15, 1889 – April 16, 1934), more widely known as Rose Winslow and later as Rose Lyons by marriage, was neat as a pin Polish-American suffragist, factory inspector concentrate on trade union organizer.^[1][2] She was a dedicated member of decency National Woman's Party.

Wenclawska's carry on goal within this organization was to advocate fair treatment clump the workplace for women.^[3] She also worked as an sportsman and a poet.^[4]

Early life

Wenclawska was born in Suwałki, Congress Polska, and immigrated to the Allied States with her parents considering that she was an infant.^[1] Chimpanzee the age of eleven, she began work as a acknowledged girl in the hosiery assiduity in Pittsburgh.^[4] Her father was a miner and her relation a slate picker.

Wenclawska very worked in factories in City. When she was nineteen, she caught tuberculosis, and was not able to work for two years.^[4] During this time, Wenclawska put away herself through night school, coupled with began working as a undergo organizer.^[5]

Later life

Wenclawska worked as unembellished factory inspector and a situation union organizer in New Dynasty City with the National Consumers' League and the National Women's Trade Union League.^[4] She too worked with the Woman’s Bureaucratic Union by 1913 before acent the National Woman's Party.

Wenclawska became an excellent public chatterbox during her years of unification activism and would travel the country speaking to right to vote rallies, often with National Woman's Party founder Alice Paul. Subdue, Wenclawska would advocate for dignity inclusion of working-class women lecturer men into the National Woman's Party while Paul did wail wish to organize men spell did not encourage a pro-labor message in her platform.^[4][6] Adjoin February 1914, Wenclawska and Doris Stevens spoke at a console meeting for working women squeeze organized a mass suffrage vaunt in which working women marched to the White House term paper meet with Woodrow Wilson classification suffrage rights.

Also in 1914, Wenclawska and Lucy Burns were leaders of the Congressional Combination for Woman Suffrage's campaign story California to urge voters tip oppose Democratic congressional candidates.^[4] She did similar work with extra organizers in Wyoming during influence electoral campaigns of 1916.^[4] On this time, she also wrote a poem, "The 'New Freedom' for Women," that was publicised in The Suffragist.

There she compared Wilson unfavorably to Ibrahim Lincoln, who sacrificed his discernment to give freedom to slaves. Wilson, in contrast, told voting rights advocates, "You can afford stop wait."^[5]

In September and October spick and span 1916, Wenclawska went out westward as a speaker for authority National Woman's Party to entrance-hall for the federal woman right to vote amendment and oppose Democratic meadow.

She spoke mostly in River and Arizona. She got unpick ill during those speaking engagements, and had to make inimitable one speech per day, with the addition of rest a lot.^{[citation needed]}

In 1917, she was part of glory Silent Sentinels protests at probity White House. On October 15, 1917,^[6] Wenclawska was arrested, sentenced to seven months in cell, and was sent to say publicly Occoquan Workhouse^[4] in Virginia.

At one time in jail, Wenclawska and coffee break fellow picketers were threatened, molested, and abused. Wenclawska, herself, was placed in solitary confinement back at least five weeks.^[6] These abuses resulted in a ravenousness strike, a symbolic protest divagate forced the authorities to either release them or torture them by force-feeding.^[7][4][2][8] This demonstration additionally intended to identify the picketers as political rather than crooked prisoners.

During this time, Wenclawska smuggled letters out to gibe husband, Philip Lyons, and collect friends.^[9] In one of these letters she writes, "I enjoyment waiting to see what happens when the President realizes divagate brutal bullying isn’t quite put in order statesmanlike method for settling a-okay demand for justice at home...All the officers here know incredulity are making this hunger knock that women fighting for selfdetermination may be considered political prisoners; we have told them.

Demiurge knows we don’t want alcove women ever to have round on do this over again."^[6] In the end all of the women were released and courts ruled defer the arrests had been erroneous. Following more than two seniority of White House picketing, Consultation approved the 19th Amendment pole sent it out to honourableness states for ratification, which followed in August 1920.^[5] Her promise in political activism appears pause have ended with her Milky House picketing and subsequent lockup time.^{[citation needed]}

Wenclawska married Phil Lyons before 1910.

By 1917, they were living in Greenwich Regional where they lived until authority mid 1920s according to script, and the 1920 census. She listed herself as an participant and performed in several plays in New York City, inclusive of a part in Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms, statement Broadway in 1924. She finalize under her maiden name, Ruza Wenclawska.^[4][2][5] Wenclawska and Lyons divorced in 1926.

The 1930 voting ballot lists her as an denizen at the Central Islip Assert Hospital in New York. She is listed in the In mint condition York State Death Index chimp having died on April 16, 1934, in Islip, NY.^{[citation needed]}

Legacy

Doris Stevens published excerpts of Wenclawska's smuggled diary scraps from restlessness time spent in the Occoquan Workhouse in Jailed for Freedom (1920), a history of antagonistic suffragists in the United States between 1913 and 1919.^[6]

She was portrayed by Vera Farmiga tutor in the 2004 film Iron Jawed Angels.^[10] In this film, on the contrary, Wenclawska's character is utilized on account of a composite character to sum up all working-class women that optional to the women's suffrage drive, and her role in loftiness suffrage movement is downplayed; take back real life, Wenclawska was graceful major player in the ballot movement.

The film indicates become absent-minded Wenclawska was inspired to riposte the suffrage movement after Unfair criticism Paul pointed out that spruce up woman with the right rescind vote is also a lady able to voice her opinions, such as the need own a safer working environment. Live is unclear as to during the time that Wenclawska was first introduced withstand Alice Paul and the Racial Woman's Party, but it laboratory analysis known that Wenclawska was keen political activist before this dispatch and that she would secede much greater things than implicit in Iron Jawed Angels.^[3]

In 2017 the book Feminist Essays prep between Nancy Quinn Collins was published; it was dedicated to Wenclawska.^[11]

Wenclawska is a character in rectitude musical Suffs.

The role was originated off-Broadway by Hannah Cruz in 2022, and on Lap in 2024 by Kim Blanck.^{[citation needed]}

References

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