The Silent Sentinels, also known as the Sentinels of Liberty, were a group of over 2,000 women in favor of women's suffrage organized by Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party, who nonviolently protested in front of the White House during Woodrow Wilson's presidency starting on January 10, 1917. Nearly 500 were arrested, and 168 served jail time. They were the first group to picket the White House. Later, they also protested in Lafayette Square, not stopping until June 4, 1919 when the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed both by the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Silent Sentinels picketing the White House
Virginia Arnold with a banner in 1918.
Florence Bayard Hilles, chairman of the Delaware Branch of the NWP and member of the national executive committee, was arrested picketing the White House July 13, 1917, sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan Workhouse. She was pardoned by President Wilson after serving three days of her term.
Alice Stokes Paul was an American Quaker, suffragist, feminist, and women's rights activist, and one of the foremost leaders and strategists of the campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits sex discrimination in the right to vote. Paul initiated, and along with Lucy Burns and others, strategized events such as the Woman Suffrage Procession and the Silent Sentinels, which were part of the successful campaign that resulted in the amendment's passage in August 1920.
Paul in 1918
Paul in 1915
Inez Milholland leading the Woman Suffrage Procession on horseback in 1913
Cover to the program for the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession, which Paul organized