Lucy Burns (July 28, 1879-December 22, 1966) was an American suffragist and women's rights advocate. She was a close friend of Alice Paul. Together, they formed the National Woman's Party.
Burns was born in Brooklyn, New York to an Irish Catholic family. A gifted student, she would go on to college at Vassar and Yale before becoming an English teacher.
She spent part of her youth in Europe, moving at the age of twenty seven to Germany. She would eventually wind up in England, where she graduated from the famed Oxford University.
It was while in England that she met Paul, after becoming a member of the Women's Social and Political Union, which fought for women's rights in England. Burns and Paul had jail stints in England for protesting; their friendship fortified through these experiences. Their battles in Britain towards feminine equality inspired them to continue on championing their ideals in the United States, and, upon release and return to the States, they became involved with the National American Women Suffrage Association as its Congressional lobbyists and ended up splitting from NAWSA in a dispute over tactics to form what became the National Woman's Party.
They were despised by many men of the era, and were opposed by conservative women as well as by more conservative suffragettes who advocated less militant tactics. Burns and Paul, however, persisted in fighting for women's rights, particularly their right to vote. After founding the National Woman's Party, the duo were among the first women to picket in front of the White House in Washington, D.C.. The NWP was not political party per se in that it did not run candidates for office. The organization was bi-partisan and directed its attacks at whoever was President of the United States during the short period that they lasted, in this case, the President being Woodrow Wilson. Burns also opposed World War I, in part because it was a war led by men and because young men were being sent and giving up their lives without much of a choice, as men were picked up to serve the United States with a draft.
Lucy Burns went to jail many times in the United States, sometimes alongside her lifelong friend Paul. They claimed that they were nothing else but political prisoners, as, most of the time, they were arrested while picketing at the White House.
Burns was possibly tortured and force-fed during her jail stints, something that happened several times to Alice Paul. Lucy Burns joined her friend in hunger strikes held while jailed, to demonstrate they would not give up on their cause. Out of the better known suffragists of the era, Burns was the one that spent the most time in jail.
After women gained the right to vote in the United States, Lucy Burns went on to lead a quiet life until she died in 1966.
In 2004, HBO Films broadcast "Iron Jawed Angels", chronicling the struggle of Alice Paul and other suffragists.
