Biography
Mary A. Nolan was a suffrage activist who joined the National Woman's Party “Silent Sentinels, ” the group that picketed for women’s voting rights by confronting the federal government directly. In 1917 she was arrested for picketing the White House and sent to the Occoquan Workhouse, where she described violent treatment of imprisoned suffragists and the coercive response to hunger-striking prisoners. Nolan continued to return to public protest and was repeatedly arrested and jailed, using her experiences to document how the state attempted to break the suffrage movement through incarceration and abuse.
The appendix records an additional January 1919 watchfire sentence of twenty-four hours for Mary A. Nolan, separate from her November 1917 Occoquan episode. This is an imposed term, not independently established actual service.
Doris Stevens, Jailed for Freedom, Appendix 4, PDF pages 13.
