The Justice Bell is a replica of the Liberty Bell made in 1915 to promote the cause for women’s suffrage in the United States.  It traveled around the country between 1915 to 1920 before finding a permanent home in Valley Forge’s own Washington Memorial Chapel.  In 2020 the bell was being transported to Independence Square for the centennial of the 19th Amendment, when it fell from the truck and was damaged. For the last three years, Justice Bell, which normally resides at Washington Memorial Chapel at Valley Forge, was not on public display but now the repairs and restoration have been completed by the Verdin Company of Cincinnati, and the Justice Bell is back home in the rotunda of the Washington Memorial Chapel’s bell tower.

In 1915, a referendum for the 19th Amendment to US Constitution would as would appear on the ballot in the November election.  Similar amendments had been proposed every year since 1878 but each had failed to get the needed support in Congress.  Pennsylvania suffragists wanted motivate voters to demand support for granting women the right to vote. They hoped to launch a campaign to win the hearts and minds of the male voters by referencing one of the nation’s most enduring symbols of freedom – The Liberty Bell.  Chester County activist Katharine Wentworth Ruschenberger proposed that a replica of the Liberty Bell be made then driven around the state, put in parades, and placed on prominent display to get male voters (the only voters at the time) to demand that their congressmen support the bill. 

The Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association had a 2000-pound bronze replica (without the crack) cast by the Meneely Bell Company in Troy, New York.  Instead of “PROCLAIM LIBERTY THROUGHOUT ALL THE LAND UNTO ALL THE INHABITANTS THEREOF” this new bell would bear the inscription “ESTABLISH JUSTICE PROCLAIM LIBERTY THROUGHOUT ALL THE LAND UNTO ALL THE INHABITANTS THEREOF” to reference their disenfranchisement.  They also had the bell’s clapper was chained to its side so that the bell could not to be rung until women were silenced no more. The original Liberty Bell “announced the creation of democracy,” Ruschenberger said, and “the women’s Liberty Bell will announce the completion of democracy.”

The referendum failed again in 1915 but the Justice Bell continued it journey.  Over the next four years, it will appear in the face of entrenched opposition. But over the next few years, it will travel Through all 67 counties in Pennsylvania, and to Chicago and Washington, D. C. as suffragists continued their fight for the vote, the Justice Bell became a galvanizing symbol not just in Pennsylvania but around the country.  Finally, in 1920, after passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that granted women the right to vote, the Justice Bell was finally rung on September 25, 1920 in Philadelphia’s Independence Square in a huge celebration of our journey toward a “more perfect union.”

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