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.
Stevens records repeated January 1919 watchfire arrests and a twenty-four-hour jail sentence, separate from Nolan’s November 1917 case. The unspecified number of arrests is not converted into invented individual episodes. This case records the meaningful imposed sentence without assuming an individual arrest day, admission, physical release or completed twenty-four-hour service.
Stevens records Nolan’s education at the Mont de Chantal convent in West Virginia and her earlier work as a teacher and organizer in the Southern library movement. The appendix dates her joining the National Woman’s Party to 1917.
Doris Stevens, Jailed for Freedom, Appendix 4, printed page 366.
