Suffragists, led by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, mounted the first sustained picketing of the White House. The demonstrations were entirely peaceful and the banners used the words of the President at the time, Woodrow Wilson, to argue the justice of their cause. The response was violent. Many objected to the fact that the women were pursuing a political agenda while U.S. troops were fighting the First World War. Others were outraged that the women would dare to picket the White House in the first place.

President Wilson was not amused and the D.C. government arrested the protesters on trumped up charges of blocking traffic. The women were confined in poor conditions, fed rancid wormy food, and given bad water. Their claim to be treated as political prisoners was rejected. The other inmates were incited by the guards to attack them. When some of the women went on hunger strikes to protest their mistreatment and imprisonment, they were placed in solitary confinement and brutally force fed. The government tried to have Alice Paul declared insane so that she could be committed indefinitely, but the psychiatrist declared her sane. Word of the women's treatment got out and the public outcry was immense.

The suffragists were applying all of the principles on non-violent mass action: meeting violence with peacefulness; generating massive publicity; applying political or economic pressure; and making arguments that worked on the conscience of the general public and of their adversaries. Under the pressure of this campaign, President Wilson abandoned his opposition to women's suffrage and worked actively for the passage and ratification of the 19th Amendment.