Year Honored: 1986
Birth: 1884 - 1975
Born in: Delaware
Biography
Mabel Vernon was an organizer and recruiter for the Suffragist Movement. Working with Alice Paul’s National American Woman Suffrage Association, she helped successfully campaign for the passing of the 19th Amendment.
Vernon was born in Wilmington, DE in 1884 to Quaker parents. Her father, George Washington Vernon, was the editor of the Wilmington Daily Republican. Mary Hooten, Vernon’s mother, insisted that Vernon attend school from the age of 7. She first attended Miss Bigger’s Grammar School, then Wilmington Friend’s School, and then Swarthmore College. It was at Swarthmore that Vernon first met Alice Paul, one of the leaders of the suffragist movement. Paul would later become synonymous with the militant suffragist tactics used by NAWSA. It was also at Swarthmore that Vernon honed her public speaking ability, participating in – and winning – several oratory contests.
After graduating from Swarthmore in 1906, Vernon taught Latin and German at Radnor High School in Pennsylvania. During her tenure at the school, Vernon become involved in the local suffragist group, and in 1910 began working with the larger movement at Paul’s urging.
Vernon worked as an organizer and speaker with NAWSA and the American Women’s Suffrage Association’s Congressional Committee. The AWSA was the more peaceful counterpart to NAWSA and focused generally on state-by-state ratification of the 19th amendment. She helped to organize several of the movements key demonstrations including the Woman’s Suffrage Parade the day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, hunger strikes, unfurling a banner in the middle of President Wilson’s speech that read “Mr. President, what will you do for women’s suffrage?”, and traveling across the country to speak on street corners as a ‘recruiter and fundraiser.’
Perhaps Vernon’s most consequential act, was her work as one of the key organizers of the “silent sentinels,” a group of women that picketed in Washington six days a week from January 10, 1917 to June 4, 1919. As a part of this group, Vernon also earned the moniker of one of the “Delaware Seven,” when in June of 1917, she and seven other women were arrested outside of the White House and charged with obstructing traffic. Refusing to pay the fine, they were sentenced to jail. The move garnered widespread sympathy for the suffragist movement, with Vernon participating in the 1919 ‘Prison Tour.’
Vernon’s other contributions to the movement included testifying before the House Judiciary Committee in support of suffrage in 1915, serving as Secretary of the National Women’s Party, and interrupting a 1916 speech by President Wilson to as “Mr. President, if you sincerely desire to forward the interests of all people, why do you oppose the national enfranchisement of women?”
After women gained the right to vote in 1919, Vernon traveled the country campaigning for ‘Women-for-Congress’ in 1926, as part of the transcontinental motor trip to support female candidates for office.
She continued her activism work later in life, joining the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in the 1930s and the People’s Mandate Committee for Inter-American Peace and Cooperation in the 1940s. She was also a member of an inter-American delegation at the founding of the United Nations, and she campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment, saying “keep on pressing for the Equal Rights Amendment. I’m proud my native state of Delaware has already approved it.” She lived with her companion, a fellow suffragette, Consuelo Reyes-Calderon before her death in Washington D.C on September 2, 1975.
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Sources and Additional Readings
7 Delaware women who changed the world. The First State Blog - State of Delaware. (2019, February 15). Retrieved January 10, 2022, from https://firststate.blogs.delaware.gov/famous-delaware-women/
Abbott, S. (2020, December 14). Mabel Vernon. First Wave Feminisms. Retrieved January 10, 2022, from https://sites.uw.edu/twomn347/2020/12/14/mabel-vernon/
Collection inventory. Mabel Vernon Papers An inventory of her papers at Syracuse University. (n.d.). Retrieved January 10, 2022, from https://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/v/vernon_m.htm
Delaware. Governor's Commission on the Status of Women, "Forward Women from Delaware's Past". Manuscript and Archival Collections Finding Aids. (n.d.). Retrieved January 10, 2022, from https://library.udel.edu/special/findaids/view?docId=ead%2Fmss0098_0203.xml%3Bquery
Mabel Vernon . Archives of Women's Political Communication. (n.d.). Retrieved January 10, 2022, from https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/directory/mabel-vernon/
Mabel Vernon speaking at Suffrage Rally, may, 1916. The Library of Congress. (n.d.). Retrieved January 10, 2022, from https://www.loc.gov/resource/mnwp.276014
Officers and national organizers : selected leaders of the National Woman's Party : articles and essays : women of protest: Photographs from the records of the National Woman's Party : digital collections : library of Congress. The Library of Congress. (n.d.). Retrieved January 10, 2022, from https://www.loc.gov/collections/women-of-protest/articles-and-essays/selected-leaders-of-the-national-womans-party/officers-and-national-organizers/
The picketing campaign nears victory – Dec. 7, 1917. Archives of Women's Political Communication. (n.d.). Retrieved January 10, 2022, from https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2019/07/19/the-picketing-campaign-nears-victory-dec-7-1917/
Statement at a hearing before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee - dec. 16, 1915. Archives of Women's Political Communication. (n.d.). Retrieved January 10, 2022, from https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2019/07/23/statement-at-a-hearing-before-the-u-s-house-judiciary-committee-dec-16-1915/
Vernon, M. (n.d.). Mabel Vernon. Calisphere. Retrieved January 10, 2022, from https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/13030/kt2r29n5pb/
