On May 16th, 2021, a national memorial honoring all of the five million American suffragists who fought for more than seven decades to win passage of the 19th Amendment was dedicated in Lorton, Virginia. It is located within Occoquan Regional Park which is part of the historic prison grounds wherein 1917 scores were illegally jailed for quietly picketing the White House with banners held high demanding their voting rights. These women were known as Silent Sentinels. The memorial serves as a visual symbol and educational tool to raise these little-known women to their proper place in history. The garden-style monument consists of four connected plazas that include a variety of educational structures. One enters the memorial through replica White House gates that lead to a Suffragist Commemorative Wall and 19 informational stations. There are three bronze, life-size statues of suffrage leaders – Alice Paul, co-founder of the National Woman’s Party and author of the Equal Rights Amendment; Mary Church Terrell, co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Carrie Chapman Catt, President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and founder of the League of Women Voters. With an effort led by the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission and supported by the National Park Service, the memorial boasts a 24’ section of the actual White House Fence in front of which the Silent Sentinels protested in 1917. It had originally been erected in the late 1800s. The memorial project began in 2007 and was supported by governments, businesses, organizations, and individuals from 45 states and DC. Initial partners were the Turning Point Suffragist Memorial Association (TPSMA) and NOVA Parks. NOVA Parks donated the land and agreed to maintain the memorial in perpetuity. TPSMA agreed to raise all the funds to build the monument and oversaw its construction. The memorial is now owned, operated, and maintained by NOVA Parks. TPSMA dissolved once it had completed its mission to “educate, inspire, and empower present and future generations to remain vigilant in the quest for equal rights” through the completion of this unique monument. Close by to the memorial is the Lucy Burns Museum, which is located in one of the galleries in the Workhouse Arts Center, which was once the historic Lorton prison. The museum’s permanent exhibition is primarily about the US suffrage movement with an emphasis on the women jailed there in 1917. The museum includes the opportunity to stroll through refurbished prison cells and see the living conditions in which most inmates were housed. The suffragists were actually incarcerated across the street from this facility in a wooden, dormitory-style building known as the Occoquan Workhouse where they were kept in inhumane conditions and forced to work. That building was torn down in the 1960s. Read more...