Continuing the International Women’s Month by talking about Suffrage Nell Mercer. In January 1918, President Wilson announced his support for the suffrage amendment, and the U.S. House of Representatives passed the proposed amendment. Despite support by prominent political leaders, including former President Theodore Roosevelt, conservative senators stood firm in opposition to the extension of suffrage. The National Woman’s Party redoubled their efforts to affect the vote in the Senate.
In a lobbying attempt, the National Woman’s Party gathered signatures on a petition supporting passage of a suffrage amendment and delivered it to Senator Jones of New Mexico, Chairman of the Suffrage Committee. Of the 96 senators representing the 48 states in the Union, 62 supported ratification in October, two votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to send the amendment to the states for ratification. Women who demonstrated outside the Senate Office Building were arrested.
Although President Wilson had expressed his support for the suffrage amendment, the 
NWF wanted him to be more active in urging passage of the amendment. President Wilson left Washington in December 1918 to attend the international peace conference in Versailles. In January 1919, the National Woman’s Party devised a new tactic to pressure for the adoption of a suffrage amendment to the Constitution. Members would gather with copies of the president’s speeches on issues relating to democracy and burn them in urns outside public buildings, including the White House. With a banner implying that the resident was a hypocrite, women outside the White House burned a speech Wilson had given on his grand tour of Europe. These “Watch Fires of Freedom” resulted in more arrests and often provoked counter demonstrations.
Nell Mercer was one of two African American women to take part in the Watch Fires of Freedom protests. African Women who took part in the National Woman’s Party are
almost forgotten to history. Many important women did take part in the protests, but anyone who was minority was pushed out of the lime light. It was a time when segregation was still very popular in the southern states and racism was everywhere especially in Norfolk. Nell was a member of the Norfolk branch of the NWP, who president was the famous Pauline Adams, the two were close friends. In the final Watch Fire of Freedom protest Nell Mercer was arrested and spent five days in prison. She did not regret anything she had done, she 100% believed in the cause the women deserved the right to vote.
In May 1919 the House of Representatives again passed a suffrage amendment. By June the Senate, now with a Republican majority, passed the amendment by a vote of 66 to 30, two more than the two-thirds required. The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted American women the right to vote, a right known as women’s suffrage, and was ratified on August 18, 1920, ending almost a century of protest.
Mercer owned a small hardware store in Norfolk during the 1920’s and 30’s and disappears from the historical record after that. There really is not much known about Nell, hopefully one day we can right that wrong. She passes in 1979 and is buried in the family cemetery in southern Virginia Beach on private property. As of now I have not received permission to visit Nell’s grave. But this is not exactly a Norfolk Historic Stone but she played a part in Norfolk’s history and has earned a spot on my blog.
Historic Headstones of Norfolk 