The Mud March , or United Procession of Women, was a peaceful demonstration in London on 9 February 1907 organised by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), in which more than three thousand women marched from Hyde Park Corner to the Strand in support of women's suffrage. Women from all classes participated in the largest public demonstration supporting women's suffrage seen to that date. It acquired the name "Mud March" from the day's weather; incessant heavy rain left the marchers drenched and mud-spattered. The NUWSS and other groups organised the march to coincide with the opening of Parliament. The event attracted much public interest and broadly sympathetic press coverage, but when a women's suffrage bill was presented the following month it was "talked out" without a vote. The march had a large impact on public awareness and on the movement's tactics. Large peaceful public demonstrations, never previously attempted, became standard features of the suffrage campaign. ( Full article... )
February 9 : Feast day of Saint Apollonia (in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy)
| | Laura Clay (February 9, 1849 –June 29, 1941) was a leader of the American women's suffrage movement and the co-founder and first president of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association. She was one of the most important suffragists in the South, favoring the states' rights approach to suffrage. A powerful orator, she was active in the Democratic Party and had important leadership roles in local, state and national politics. In 1920 at the Democratic National Convention, she was one of two women to be the first women to have their names placed into nomination for the presidency at the convention of a major political party. This photograph by the Gerhard Sisters shows Clay in 1916. Photograph credit: Gerhard Sisters; restored by Kentuckian Recently featured: |