42 Facts About Lucy Burns

Lucy Burns was an American suffragist and women's rights advocate.

Lucy Burns was a passionate activist in the United States and the United Kingdom, who joined the militant suffragettes.

Lucy Burns was born in New York to an Irish Catholic family.

Lucy Burns speaks and writes with equal eloquence and elegance.

Lucy Burns was a gifted student and first attended Packer Collegiate Institute, or what was originally known as the Brooklyn Female Academy, for second preparatory school in 1890.

Lucy Burns met one of her lifelong role models, Laura Wylie, while attending Packer Collegiate Institute.

Lucy Burns attended Columbia University, Vassar College, and Yale University before becoming an English teacher.

Lucy Burns taught at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn for two years.

In Germany, Lucy Burns studied at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin from 1906 to 1909.

Lucy Burns later moved to the United Kingdom, where she enrolled at Oxford University to study English.

Lucy Burns was fortunate enough to have a very extensive educational background as her father, Edwards Lucy Burns, supported her and financed her international education.

Lucy Burns was so inspired by their activism and charisma that she dropped her graduate studies to stay with them and work in the Women's Social and Political Union, an organization dedicated to fighting for women's rights in the United Kingdom.

Lucy Burns started selling their newsletter Votes for Women, and joined a protest on June 29,1909, where she was arrested.

Lucy Burns was later employed by the Women's Social and Political Union as a salaried organizer from 1910 to 1912.

Lucy Burns was the WSPU Edinburgh organiser for two years.

Lucy Burns was an active supporter of the campaign to boycott the 1911 census; she invited suffragettes from residents and non-residents of Edinburgh to a large gathering in the city's Cafe Vegetaria on the night of the census, so that they could not be officially registered.

Lucy Burns was with Jennie Baines, Mary Leigh, Alice Paul, Emily Davison and Mabel Capper trying to stop a Limehouse meeting on the Budget by Lloyd George.

Lucy Burns's activism resulted in numerous court appearances and reports of "disorderly conduct" in the newspapers.

Lucy Burns had been given a Hunger Strike Medal 'for Valour' by WSPU.

Lucy Burns was elected unanimously as an executive member of the Congressional Union of the National American Women Suffrage Association.

Lucy Burns was particularly infuriated with President Wilson because he had told them he would support the Committee on Suffrage, but then never mentioned his promise in his address to Congress.

Paul and Lucy Burns did not want to start a completely separate organization that could potentially rival NAWSA and hinder progress in the movement, so they tried on numerous occasions to initiate negotiations with NAWSA leaders.

Lucy Burns was the first woman to speak before the Congressional delegates in 1914, when the Anthony amendment finally made it out of committee and into the House.

Lucy Burns went to San Francisco, California with suffragist Rose Winslow.

In 1915 Lucy Burns became the editor of the Congressional Union's newspaper The Suffragist.

Lucy Burns adamantly supported this plan and on June 5,6 and 7,1916 at the Blackstone Theater in Chicago, delegates and female voters met to organize the National Woman's Party.

Lucy Burns played a large role in the National Woman's Party.

Lucy Burns worked in virtually every aspect of the organization at one time or another.

Lucy Burns was savvy with working with the media and supplied two hundred news correspondents with frequent news bulletins.

Lucy Burns opposed World War I, seeing it as a war led by powerful men that resulted in young men being drafted and giving their lives with little free will.

Lucy Burns was arrested in 1917 while picketing the White House and was sent to Occoquan Workhouse.

In jail, Lucy Burns joined Alice Paul and many other women in hunger strikes to demonstrate their commitment to their cause, asserting that they were political prisoners.

Lucy Burns was prepared for the hunger strikes since she had previously participated in this and been force-fed in prison in Britain with the WSPU.

Lucy Burns helped organize and circulate one of the first documents that defined the status of political prisoners.

Once prison officials realized what Lucy Burns was doing, they had her transferred to a district jail and put in solitary confinement.

Lucy Burns was so loved and respected by her fellow suffragists that the women in the cell across from her held their hands above their head and stood in the same position.

The amendment passed in the House by a vote of 274 to 136, and the women of the NWP, including Lucy Burns, began working on the 11 additional votes they would need for the amendment to pass in the Senate.

Lucy Burns requested that Congress convene for a special session in May 1919.

Lucy Burns died on December 22,1966, in Brooklyn, New York.

Lucy Burns was posthumously named an honoree by the National Women's History Alliance in 2020.

Lucy Burns is featured as a character in the musical Suffs with book, music, and lyrics by Shaina Taub, which focuses on the activism of Alice Paul and Lucy Burns.

The Lucy Burns Museum opened to the public on January 25,2020, with a gala opening on May 9,2020, in Lorton, Virginia, on the former site of the Occoquan Workhouse, called the Lorton Reformatory, where the "Night of Terror" took place.