Women Couldn't Vote, So They Gagged the Liberty Bell

In 1915, Pennsylvania suffragists had a full-size copy of the Liberty Bell cast, then chained its clapper so it couldn’t ring until women could vote. They called it the Justice Bell.

To get the vote, Pennsylvania women had to amend the state constitution, and the only people allowed to vote on that amendment were men. So the bell went on the road to make the case.

In this video

• The 12-year-old girl who pulled the lever to pour the bronze
• A 5,000-mile pickup-truck tour of all 67 Pennsylvania counties
• The summer two Liberty Bells crossed the country at the same time
• The newspaper headline that lost to a “Human Fly”
• The 1915 vote, and the framed photo every U.S. senator got in the mail
• The day the chain finally came off on Independence Square
• The bell’s strange life afterward: a slaughterhouse stable, a chicken-wire cage, and a fall off a truck in 2020

When the chain came off in 1920, the girl who poured the bronze was the one who rang it.