WOMEN OF THE NATION ARE LOYAL TO THE COUNTRY

JFK+50:  Volume 7, No. 2425

DUDLEY FIELD MALONE RESIGNS IN PROTEST OF SUFFRAGE POLICY

Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) One hundred years ago, September 7, 1917, Dudley Field Malone*, customs collector at the port of New York, offered his resignation to President Woodrow Wilson in protest of the administration's failure to advance passage of woman suffrage and because of the imprisonment of suffrage pickets of the White House.

Mr. Malone, who was counsel defending the first of the suffragists arraigned in court, wrote to the President...

"I promised I would spend all my energy to get the...administration to pass the federal suffrage amendment.  It...now becomes my profound obligation...to keep my promise."

He went on to criticize the administration for permitting the denial of constitutional rights of petition to the suffragists and argued that suffrage was "an urgent war measure" because...

"The women of the nation are, and always will be, loyal to the country."


*Dudley Field Malone (1882-1950) became one of the most prominent liberal attorneys of the U.S. in the 1920s.  He graduated from the College of St. Francis Xavier in 1903 & studied law at Fordham.  DFM helped organize Woodrow Wilson's presidential campaign of 1912.  He ran for governor of NY in 1920 & was co-defense counsel at the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925.

SOURCE

"Malone Quits; Suffrage Plea Ignored, Cause", Chicago Daily Tribune, September 8, 1917.

Dudley Field Malone

Library of Congress Photo (1913)