Elsie Hill

Elsie M. Hill at a Congressional Union picket at the gate of the White House.

Elsie Hill (1883–1970) was an American suffragist, as were her sisters Clara and Helena Hill.[1] She was the daughter of Congressman Ebenezer J. Hill.[2] She taught French in Washington, D.C. at a high school after graduating Vassar College in 1906, and was a leader of the D.C. Branch of the College Equal Suffrage League when Alice Paul and Lucy Burns became active in Washington.[1][3][4] She was lifelong friends with Alice Paul.[1]

Biography

Elsie Hill was involved in the planning of the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913, and notably reached out to African American students during the planning of that event.[5] In 1914-1915 she joined the Congressional Union of Woman Suffrage’s executive committee, and headed efforts to establish branches of the Union in South Carolina and Virginia.[4] In July 1916 she spoke at a street meeting in St. Paul, Minnesota, during a Prohibition Party convention (while representing the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage) and the convention did endorse a plank advocating a suffrage amendment.[3][6] Alice Paul sent Hill on public tours to campaign in favor of women's suffrage in 1916.[4]

She was arrested for speaking at a Lafayette Square meeting in Washington D.C. in August 1918, and was arrested in Boston in February 1919 for picketing President Woodrow Wilson upon his return from Europe.[4]

In 1921 she married Albert Levitt but kept her own name, as was noted in the New York Times.[7] Also that year she chaired the National Women's Party's convention, and she was the Party's National Council chairwoman from 1921 until 1925.[4] (The National Women's Party was simply the Congressional Union of Woman Suffrage with a new name.) In 1924, Hill and other members of the Party visited President Calvin Coolidge to lobby on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment.[4]

In 1956 she and Levitt divorced.[1]

In 1968 Hill was a passenger on Pan American Airlines' first flight from New York to Moscow.[1][2]

The Elsie M. Hill Papers are held at the Archives and Special Collections Library in the Vassar College Libraries.[1]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 http://specialcollections.vassar.edu/findingaids/hill_elsie.html
  2. 1 2 https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19680717&id=kCZPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=nAEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7142,6913268
  3. 1 2 http://americancivilwar.com/women/Womens_Suffrage/Elsie_Hill.html
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/profiles7.html
  5. ↑ Adams, Katherine (2008). Alice Paul and the American Woman Suffrage Campaign. Chicago: University of Illinois. pp. 109–110.
  6. ↑ http://www.loc.gov/resource/mnwp.160063
  7. ↑ http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10C1FFF3A541B7A93CBA8178AD85F468285F9
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