Ruza Wenclawska

Ruza Wenclawska (December 15, 1889 – April 16, 1934), more widely known as Rose Winslow and later as Rose Lyons by marriage, was a Polish-American suffragist, factory inspector and trade union organizer. She was a dedicated member of the National Woman's Party. Wenclawska's main goal within this organization was to advocate fair treatment in the workplace for women. She also worked as an actress and a poet.

Early life Wenclawska was born in Suwałki, Congress Poland, and immigrated to the United States with her parents when she was an infant.

Later life Wenclawska worked as a factory inspector and a trade union organizer in New York City with the National Consumers' League and the National Women's Trade Union League. by 1913 before joining the National Woman's Party. Wenclawska became an excellent public speaker during her years of union activism and would travel across the country speaking to suffrage rallies, often with National Woman's Party founder Alice Paul. However, Wenclawska would advocate for the inclusion of working-class women and men into the National Woman's Party while Paul did not wish to organize men and did not encourage a pro-labor message in her platform. In February 1914, Wenclawska and Doris Stevens spoke at a mass meeting for working women and organized a mass suffrage parade in which working women marched to the White House to meet with Woodrow Wilson on suffrage rights. Also in 1914, Wenclawska and Lucy Burns were leaders of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage's campaign in California to urge voters to oppose Democratic congressional candidates (see House and Senate election results). In one of these letters she writes, "I am waiting to see what happens when the President realizes that brutal bullying isn’t quite a statesmanlike method for settling a demand for justice at home...All the officers here know we are making this hunger strike that women fighting for liberty may be considered political prisoners; we have told them. God knows we don’t want other women ever to have to do this over again." she was a tuberculosis ward patient.

Theatre Wenclawska started acting professionally in Redemption or The Living Corpse in October 1918. The play opened at the Plymouth Theater on Broadway, now the Schoenfeld Theater. It was produced by Arthur Hopkins, and John Barrymore played the lead role. Wenclawska played "a maid" and was credited as Ruza Wenclaw. In December 1918, she started performing with The Provincetown Players in Greenwich Village, under the name Ruza Wenclaw. She was Kate in The Rescue. She then played the role of 0555 in 5050 by Robert Allerton Parker in January 1919. In April 1919, she appeared as Annie in The Rope by Eugene O'Neill.

After a few years in Europe, Wenclawska went back to New York, and started working at the Provincetown Playhouse again, this time as Ruza Wenclawska. In January 1924, she appeared in the Playhouse's production of The Spook Sonata (The Ghost Sonata). She played the Janitress. She then played Prudence in Fashion by Anna Cora Mowatt. The play was produced at the Provincetown Playhouse from February to April 1924. It then moved to the Greenwich Village Theatre until July 1924. It moved to the Cort Theater, now James Earl Jones Theater on Broadway in July 1924. Fashion closed on July 1924. Wenclawska was a singer in S.S. Glencairn by O'Neill at the Provincetown Playhouse in November 1924. Desire Under the Elms by O'Neill opened at the Greenwich Village in November 1924. Ruza Wenclawska was "other folks from surrounding farms". It played there until January 1925. It then transferred to the Earl Carroll Theatre on Broadway. It played there until June 1925. The production then transferred to the George M. Cohan's Theatre until September 1925. It seems that Wenclawska left in July 1925 as an article from the New York Herald announced her return in Paris.

Legacy Doris Stevens published excerpts of Wenclawska's smuggled diary scraps from her time spent in the Occoquan Workhouse in Jailed for Freedom (1920), a history of militant suffragists in the United States between 1913 and 1919. dramatized as a broad composite of working-class women discovering activism through the suffrage movement.

Wenclawska is depicted in the musical Suffs, a role originated off-Broadway by Hannah Cruz in 2022, and on Broadway by Kim Blanck in 2024.