On Dec. 14, 1917, U.S. peace activist and
suffragist Kate Richards O'Hare was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for a
speech denouncing WWI. Occupying a neighboring jail cell was Emma Goldman, the
well-known anarchist organizer, feminist, writer and anti-war critic who was
imprisoned for obstructing the draft. O'Hare was one of a number of prisoners
Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs cited in his "Canton Speech"
for which he in turn was imprisoned. He said: "The other day they
sentenced Kate Richards O'Hare to the penitentiary for five years. The United
States, under plutocratic rule, is the only country that would send a woman to
prison for five years for exercising the right of free speech." Read more
about her life and work: http://womhist.alexanderstreet.com/kro/intro.htm For a
reading of Debs' speech from Voices of a People's History of the United States,
see: http://zinnedproject.org/posts/11179 Image: Kate Richards O'Hare addresses
crowd in front of the St. Louis Court House on National Women's Suffrage Day, 2
May 1914. Photograph by the St. Louis Times, 1914. Missouri History Museum
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