Hazel devoted her adult life to ‘the cause’, the fight for women’s equality. Born in Aspen, Colorado, U.S.A. in 1890 Hazel studied chemistry at Vassar College, graduating in 1913. She went on to teach and study at the University of Missouri where in 1916 she completed a master’s degree in chemistry. However she soon experienced gender discrimination first hand when she failed to secure employment as a chemist. She recalled this rejection in an article published in The Washington Post in August 1977:
I had decided I wanted to be a chemist, not a teacher again. I applied from New York to California, answering every ad relating to chemists. I got stacks of letters back. A big stack. Every single one read, ‘You are qualified, but we do not employ women.’ I was indignant!…
This injustice propelled Hazel in 1916 to join the new National Women’s Party (NWP), set up by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, to demand the equal franchise for women in all U.S. states via an amendment to the American Constitution….
Hazel was soon working for Alice Paul, leader of the NWP, at the party’s headquarters in Washington DC. Here she engaged in militant activism and along with Paul was arrested and jailed in 1917 for chaining herself to the railings of the White House. She was sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan jail and went on hunger strike. Within a week President Wilson had pardoned the women.Footnote13 Reflecting on her experiences as a suffragette Hazel commented that the NWP never sanctioned violence: