Ruza Wenclawska | |
|---|---|
 Wenclawska inNew York City, c.1916 | |
| Born | Ruza Wenclawska (1889-12-15)December 15, 1889 |
| Died | April 16, 1934(1934-04-16) (aged 44) |
| Nationality | Polish-American |
| Other names |
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| Occupations |
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| Spouse | Philip Lyons |
Ruza Wenclawska (December 15, 1889 – April 16, 1934), more widely known asRose Winslow and later asRose Lyons by marriage, was a Polish-Americansuffragist, factory inspector and trade union organizer.[1][2] She was a dedicated member of theNational Woman's Party. Wenclawska's main goal within this organization was to advocate fair treatment in the workplace for women.[3] She also worked as an actress and a poet.[4]
Wenclawska was born inSuwałki,Congress Poland, and immigrated to theUnited States with her parents when she was an infant.[1] At the age of eleven, she began work as a mill girl in the hosiery industry inPittsburgh.[4] Her father was a miner and her brother a slate picker. Wenclawska also worked in factories inPhiladelphia. When she was nineteen, she caughttuberculosis, and was unable to work for two years.[4] During this time, Wenclawska put herself through night school, and began working as a labor organizer.[5]
Wenclawska worked as a factory inspector and a trade union organizer inNew York City with theNational Consumers' League and theNational Women's Trade Union League.[4] She also worked with theWoman’s Political Union by 1913 before joiningthe National Woman's Party. Wenclawska became an excellent public speaker during her years of union activism and would travel across the country speaking to suffrage rallies, often with National Woman's Party founderAlice Paul. However, Wenclawska would advocate for the inclusion of working-class women and men into the National Woman's Party while Paul did not wish to organize men and did not encourage a pro-labor message in her platform.[4][6] In February 1914, Wenclawska andDoris Stevens spoke at a mass meeting for working women and organized a mass suffrage parade in which working women marched to the White House to meet with Woodrow Wilson on suffrage rights. Also in 1914, Wenclawska andLucy Burns were leaders of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage's campaign inCalifornia to urge voters to opposeDemocratic congressional candidates.[4] She did similar work with other organizers inWyoming during the electoral campaigns of 1916.[4] During this time, she also wrote a poem, "The 'New Freedom' for Women," that was published inThe Suffragist. There she compared Wilson unfavorably to Abraham Lincoln, who sacrificed his life to give freedom to slaves. Wilson, in contrast, told suffrage advocates, "You can afford to wait."[5]
In September and October of 1916, Wenclawska went out west as a speaker for the National Woman's Party to lobby for the federal woman suffrage amendment and oppose Democratic candidates. She spoke mostly in Colorado and Arizona. She got very ill during those speaking engagements, and had to make only one speech per day, and rest a lot.[citation needed]
In 1917, she was part of theSilent Sentinels protests at theWhite House. On October 15, 1917,[6] Wenclawska was arrested, sentenced to seven months in jail, and was sent to theOccoquan Workhouse[4] in Virginia. Once in jail, Wenclawska and her fellow picketers were threatened, assaulted, and abused. Wenclawska, herself, was placed insolitary confinement for at least five weeks.[6] These abuses resulted in ahunger strike, a symbolic protest that forced the authorities to either release them or torture them byforce-feeding.[7][4][2][8] This demonstration also intended to identify the picketers as political rather than criminal prisoners. During this time, Wenclawska smuggled letters out to her husband, Philip Lyons, and her friends.[9] In one of these letters she writes, "I am waiting to see what happens when the President realizes that brutal bullying isn’t quite a statesmanlike method for settling a demand for justice at home...All the officers here know we are making this hunger strike that women fighting for liberty may be considered political prisoners; we have told them. God knows we don’t want other women ever to have to do this over again."[6] Eventually all of the women were released and courts ruled that the arrests had been improper. Following more than two years of White House picketing, Congress approved the 19th Amendment and sent it out to the states for ratification, which followed in August 1920.[5] Her engagement in political activism appears to have ended with her White House picketing and subsequent jail time.[citation needed]
Wenclawska married Phil Lyons before 1910. By 1917, they were living in Greenwich Village where they lived until the mid 1920s according to letters, and the 1920 census. She listed herself as an actress and performed in several plays in New York City, including a part in Eugene O'Neill'sDesire Under the Elms, on Broadway in 1924. She performed under her maiden name, Ruza Wenclawska.[4][2][5] Wenclawska and Lyons divorced in 1926. The 1930 census lists her as an inmate at the Central Islip State Hospital in New York. She is listed in the New York State Death Index as having died on April 16, 1934, in Islip, NY.[citation needed]
Doris Stevens published excerpts of Wenclawska's smuggled diary scraps from her time spent in theOccoquan Workhouse inJailed for Freedom (1920), a history of militant suffragists in the United States between 1913 and 1919.[6]
She was portrayed byVera Farmiga in the 2004 filmIron Jawed Angels.[10] In this film, however, Wenclawska's character is utilized as a composite character to represent all working-class women that contributed to the women's suffrage movement, and her role in the suffrage movement is downplayed; in real life, Wenclawska was a major player in the suffrage movement. The film indicates that Wenclawska was inspired to join the suffrage movement after Alice Paul pointed out that a woman with the right to vote is also a woman able to voice her opinions, such as the need for a safer working environment. It is unclear as to when Wenclawska was first introduced to Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party, but it is known that Wenclawska was a political activist before this introduction and that she would do much greater things than suggested inIron Jawed Angels.[3]
In 2017 the bookFeminist Essays by Nancy Quinn Collins was published; it was dedicated to Wenclawska.[11]
Wenclawska is a character in the musicalSuffs. The role was originated off-Broadway by Hannah Cruz in 2022, and on Broadway in 2024 by Kim Blanck.[citation needed]
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