Chanting “independence or death,” the shrouded women of the Persian revolutionary movement stormed the government building in Tehran. Demanding national independence and liberty, these women boldly unveiled, tossing their chadors to the ground in mass, public protest. Questioning the very manhood of the men who were an embarrassment to their fathers, these patriots threatened to take the lives of their sons, their husbands, in addition to their own, lest they live their remaining days in an occupied and stunted Persia.

This dramatic scene did not happen recently, nor did it occur during the more commonly understood Iranian Revolution of 1979. This happened during the waning days of a vibrant constitutional movement that would forever change the nation of Iran. From it they gained a parliament (or Majlis), and for the first time in Persian history, a set of rights and entitlements that didn’t flow from the crown or the cleric. Tradesmen, clergymen and secular intellectuals, men and women alike, desperately attempted to salvage the last vestiges of their young constitution from a despotic shah and his Cossack thugs.

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