Organized by Alice Paul, the "Silent Sentinels" stood outside the White House gates holding banners demanding voting rights for women, maintaining their vigil through winter cold and eventual arrests. Their campaign of civil disobedience helped pressure President Wilson and Congress toward passing the 19th Amendment.
Alice Paul had grown impatient with decades of polite lobbying that had produced no federal amendment guaranteeing women the vote. So on January 10, 1917, she organized members of the National Woman's Party to stand silently at the White House gates holding purple, white, and gold banners, becoming the first group in American history to picket the White House.
The protest was deliberately, pointedly silent. Women held signs asking Wilson "Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?" and stood for hours in freezing weather, drawing crowds, curious tourists, and eventually hostile mobs once the U.S. entered World War I and picketing was recast by critics as unpatriotic.
Police began arresting the picketers later that year on flimsy charges like obstructing traffic, and many, including Paul herself, were imprisoned at the Occoquan Workhouse, where they endured brutal treatment and staged hunger strikes. Public outrage over their treatment built momentum that contributed directly to Wilson's eventual endorsement of suffrage and the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment.