Ten suffragists are arrested picketing the White House

For seven months, women from the National Woman's Party had stood silently outside the White House gates holding banners demanding the vote, tolerated by police, though Wilson did not respond to them. On August 28, 1917, that changed: ten picketers were arrested, charged with obstructing traffic on the same sidewalk they had occupied since January. It was the first arrest of a protest movement that had, until then, simply been allowed to stand there. The department offered no comment on why the charge appeared that day and not earlier…