Women's Suffrage Museum Offers A Learning Experience For All

LORTON, VA — A new museum in Lorton, named the Lucy Burns Museum and located at the old Lorton Correctional facility, will appeal to both women's suffrage history buffs and people who know little about how women fought long and hard to win the right to vote.

The opening of the museum on Jan. 25 was timed perfectly with the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the Virginia General Assembly. Two days after the museum opened, state lawmakers completed ratification of the ERA. The museum is free of charge, although it costs $5 to tour prison cells located behind the museum in the same building, a tour well worth the fee.

Although the museum is now welcoming visitors, its grand opening celebration is scheduled for May 9. Anyone interested in learning more about the history of the women's suffrage movement, though, may not want to wait for the May 9 festivities to visit — although the grand opening will be a good excuse for a return visit to the museum.

Because of Lucy Burns' work and sacrifices as a leader of U.S. women's suffrage and her jailing at the facility, the Workhouse Arts Center, a nonprofit group that runs the museum, chose to name the museum after her. The museum highlights how Virginia was one of the states that dragged its feet in granting women the right to vote. Along with the timing of the ERA vote in Virginia, the museum opened in 2020, the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

Women won voting rights with ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Several states had already granted women the right to vote prior to the 19th Amendment's ratification. By 1920, three-quarters of the states had voted to ratify it. Virginia was not one of them.

The Virginia General Assembly, as the museum highlights, didn't ratify the 19th Amendment until 1952, more than three decades after it had become the law of the land. Many people, even those with knowledge of Virginia's painful history of slavery and civil rights, will be surprised to learn that it took Virginia so long to finally acknowledge the rights of women.

The General Assembly's refusal to approve women's suffrage did not mean women in Virginia were prevented from voting. The 19th Amendment did not allow any states to prohibit anyone from voting based on his or her sex.

The Lucy Burns Museum presents a detailed look at the imprisonment of suffragists arrested for picketing the White House. During the so-called Night of Terror in November 1917, Burns joined other peaceful picketers as part of a campaign for the right to vote. The incident turned violent, as police arrested, beat, kicked and chained the picketers.

Burns and the other women were sent to the Lorton site, which was then known as the Occoquan Workhouse. In jail at the Lorton facility, Burns joined many other women in hunger strikes to demonstrate their commitment to their cause, asserting that they were political prisoners. The hunger strikes led to repeated and painful force-feedings. The prison leadership was instructed not to allow any of the hunger-strikers to die because a martyr in the prison would have generated even more national support for equal rights for women, including the right to vote.

The museum looks at all aspects of the women's suffrage movement, including how African American women were ignored or barred by their white counterparts from joining them in the fight for the right to vote. Black suffragists worked through their clubs, especially the National Association of Colored Women and the Woman’s Convention of the National Baptist Convention toward progressive ideals.

The museum also tells the story of other famous people who were sent to the Lorton prison for political protests. In 1967, author Norman Mailer and linguist and political dissident Noam Chomsky were jailed for crossing a police line at the March on the Pentagon against the Vietnam War. Both were sent to the Lorton prison. Mailer recounted his jailing at Lorton in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "Armies of the Night."

The museum also allows visitors to tour the only jail cells that are still intact at the entire Lorton facility. For an entry fee of $5, visitors can see the jails cells, located behind the museum in the same building. The building, known as the "punishment building, housed 38 "adjustment cells."

Fed in their cells, inmates had one hour of recreation time per day. They spent the other 23 hours confined to their cell with no privileges or assignments. Called the "black hole" by prisoners, the prison cells remained in use until the Lorton correctional facility officially closed in 2001.

The Lucy Burns Museum is open Wednesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and on Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. It is located at 9518 Workhouse Way, where Workhouse Way intersects with Ox Road (Route 123).