Name Ruza Wenclawska | ||
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Ruza Wenclawska (December 15, 1889 – 1977), also known as Rose Winslow and later as Rose Lyons by marriage, was a Polish-American suffragist, factory inspector and trade union organizer. In the 1920s, she worked as an actress on the Broadway stage.
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Early life
Wenclawska was born in Suwałki, Poland, and came to the United States with her parents when she was an infant. At the age of eleven, she began work as a mill girl in the hosiery industry in Pittsburgh. She also worked as a shop girl in Philadelphia, but when she was nineteen, she caught tuberculosis, and had to quit working for two years.
Later life
Wenclawska worked as a factory inspector and a trade union organizer in New York City with the National Consumers' League and the National Women's Trade Union League. She also gave speeches for the National Woman's Party. In 1914, she and Lucy Burns were leaders of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage's campaign in California to urge voters to oppose Democratic congressional candidates. She did similar work with other organizers in Wyoming during the electoral campaigns of 1916. In 1917, she was part of the Silent Sentinels protests at the White House, for which she served time in district jail and the Occoquan Workhouse. While in Occuquan, she went on a hunger strike and was force-fed. During that time, she smuggled letters out to her husband, Philip Lyons, and her friends. Wenclawska was also an actress and a poet. She died in 1977.
Legacy
She was portrayed by Vera Farmiga in the 2004 film Iron Jawed Angels.
In 2017 the book Feminist Essays by Nancy Quinn Collins was published; it was dedicated to Wenclawska.