Read the excerpt from Suffragists' "Great Demand" Banner.The picketing was amplified on Sunday, March 4, 1917, the day of Wilson’s second inaugural, when the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage and the National Woman’s Party organized a demonstration to "encircle the President’s Mansion with a chain of purple, white and gold.” In spite of a drenching rain, more than one thousand people came out to stand in silent vigil for several hours. A mile or so away, Jeannette Rankin of Montana took her seat in the House of Representatives as the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress.