Florence Bayard Hilles
Florence Bayard Hilles was an American suffragist, one of the founders of the National Woman's Party.Biography
Florence Hilles was born in 1865, the daughter of Thomas Francis Bayard. She was a munitions worker in World War I, and assisted in the reconstruction effort that followed it. After hearing Mabel Vernon speak, she joined the suffrage movement. On a 1916 suffrage tour, she was the principal speaker, and in Seattle scattered flyers from a seaplane. In 1917, she was elected to the national board of the National Woman's party. Though descended from a Democratic family, she often switched parties, sometimes supporting Democrats, other times campaigning against them. Hilles served as a Silent Sentinel, picketing the White House, leading 1,000 women in a "Grand Picket" on March 4, 1917. She was the chairwoman of the Delaware branch of the National Woman's Party, and jailed with Dora Lewis, sent to Occoquan Virginia Workhouse.
In 1919, she was prominent at the "Watchfire demonstrations". An advocate of the Equal Rights Amendment, she was viewed as one of the most prominent supporters of the amendment. From 1933-1936, she served as the National Chairman of the National Woman's Party. She married William S. Hilles, a lawyer. The Sewall–Belmont House and Museum's library, the Florence Bayard Hilles Research Library was founded by her. Hilles died in 1954.
