Julia R. Emory

Julia Ridgely Emory (May 4, 1885 – February 1, 1979) was an American suffragist from Maryland, who led protests in Washington, D.C., for women's right to vote.

Biography Julia Emory was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1885. Her parents were Daniel Hopper Emory, a Maryland state senator with the Republican Party, and Julia Ridgely Emory. She graduated in 1902 from Western High School.

Passionate about women's rights, Emory joined the Women's Trade Union League, a labor organization that brought together working-class and upper-class women. However, in 1917, she left the organization to focus her efforts on women's suffrage. She became very active in the National Woman's Party, including through writing articles for its publication The Suffragist.

She began attending protests at the White House and Congress in Washington, D.C., alongside such activists as Doris Stevens, Lucy Burns, and Alice Paul, with whom she became particularly close. In that capacity, she helped launch the "watchfires of freedom" campaign, in which activists burned copies of President Woodrow Wilson's speeches outside the White House. In October and November 1919, she led a picket of the Capitol to attract attention and support for the amendment, during which she was injured multiple times by police. She died in 1979 at age 93.