From a speaker’s podium in Norfolk to the gates of the White House, from city courtrooms to a jail cell in solitary confinement at the Occoquan Work House, Pauline Adams spent most of her adult life fighting for women’s rights. As an officer in the Virginia suffrage organization and as a member of the National Woman’s Party, Pauline Adams believed fervently in the abilities of women and worked actively for their rights—in particular for the right to vote.
Born in Ireland in 1874, Pauline Forstall Colclough married Walter J. Adams in 1898. Walter Adams’ medical career in the Navy brought them to Norfolk, where she began her work for women’s rights and raised two sons.
Women’s suffrage captured Pauline Adams’ attention in 1910. She helped bring to Norfolk well-known suffrage movement speakers such as the Rev. Anna Shaw and author Ellen Glasgow. She served as president of the Equal Suffrage League of Norfolk and was an officer in the state suffrage organization. More militant than many Southern suffragists, she participated in a women’s suffrage march the day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration in 1913. The demonstration gave the new President an introduction to what would be an ongoing concern for his administration. In 1917, Adams was among the women who picketed the White House to demand that the Wilson Administration support a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote. By then, however, Wilson’s more pressing concern was the war raging in Europe.
Many American men and women turned their attention to the war effort and considered militant suffragists a threat to the image of the nation in a time of world crisis. But the “Silent Sentinels” continued their vigil, believing that if the United States wanted to defend democracy abroad then the country should defend democracy at home in the form of a women’s suffrage amendment. After enduring months of picketing, Wilson’s initial amusement with the militant picketers turned to distaste for their unladylike behavior. A number of women were arrested, charged with minor offenses, and jailed. Although all were given the opportunity to pay a small fine, many of the women chose to go to jail on principle. Adams, like many of them, was confined at the Occoquan Work House, an institution within the federal prison system at Lorton, in Fairfax County, Virginia.
In Jailed for Freedom, a book written about her experience at the Occoquan Work House, fellow suffragist Doris Stevens describes the sometimes brutal treatment there. She writes of forced labor alongside other prisoners, poor diet, rancid food, hunger strikes, forced feedings to combat hunger strikes, beatings, loss of privileges, and contemptuous treatment from the guards. The women continued their fight despite their circumstances and presented a written demand for treatment as political prisoners, becoming the first U.S. citizens to do so. Finally, aware of the growing support for the suffrage movement, President Wilson announced his support for a women’s suffrage amendment toward the end of 1917. Passage of it, however, did not come for another three years.