User:Ella Heinzen/sandbox





Early Life
Nina Samorodin was born in Kiev, Russia in the early 1900s to a Jewish family. After immigrating to the United States in 1914, she became involved in both union and women’s activism. Samorodin was a factory worker and then general organizer of the Shirt Makers’ Union of Philadelphia. Additionally, she taught at the Rand School of Social Science in New York City. However, Samorodin is most well known for her work with the National Women’s Party.

Occoquan Workhouse
On September 13th, 1917, during a peaceful protest, Samorodin carried a banner to one of the White House gates. Accused of obstructing traffic, Samorodin was arrested, tried, sentenced, and incarcerated for thirty days in the Occoquan Workhouse in Lorton, Virginia. While imprisoned, a fellow suffragist named Mary Winsor said that the suffragists in jail would sing the “Occoquan Song,” a tune “set to Russian music by Miss Nina Samorodin.”

While in Occoquan, Samarodin demanded for better healthcare and treatment. It was reported that the prisoners were deprived of basic sanitation and hygiene, were served rancid food, and suffered physical mistreatment and beatings for which they were denied critical medical care. Her sister Vera visited her from time to time and noticed her health rapidly depleting and reached out to Russian ambassador  in hopes of upgrading her prison treatment by renaming her a “political prisoner” instead of “inmate." Upon release from Occoquan in the fall of 1917, she traveled to New York and taught a course in Russian language instruction at the Rand School of Social Science.

Communist Involvements
After the 1920s, Samorodin abandoned most of her work with the National Women’s Party and focused her efforts on communist endeavors in America instead. Samorodin became the Secretary-Treasurer of the Council for the Protection of the Foreign Born, an organization protecting Communist immigrants in America. In 1948 during the second “Red Scare,” Nina Samorodin’s name was brought up in the “Report of the Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities.”

Personal Inquiries
Samorodin wrote about her self-discovery as a suffragist. A recovered text that Nina wrote explained her confusion as to why females were not seen as equivalent to males in society. Her questions were answered with the simple biological fact that male and female are not mentally equal. Her interest was sparked after she began to research the biological differences between males and females.