Alice Paul was the architect of some of the most outstanding political achievements addressing equality and women’s rights in the 20th century.
She was a leader in the fight to ratify the 19th Amendment in 1920, which extended voting rights to most American women. She also authored the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 1923 and spent the rest of her life fighting for its ratification to ensure the U.S. Constitution protects women and men equally. As of this writing, in May 2021, the ERA has yet to be ratified.
Few individuals have had as much impact on American history as Alice Paul. Her life symbolizes the long struggle for justice in the United States and around the world. Her vision was the expectation that women and men should be equal partners in society.
Alice's parents, William and Tacie Paul were Quakers who married in 1881. In 1883 they purchased a 265-acre farm in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, later dubbed Paulsdale. The original Paul farm is now home to the Alice Paul Institute.
Born on January 11, 1885, Alice was the oldest of four children. Her three siblings were: William (1886), Helen (1889), and Parry (1895).
Alice’s childhood years on the “home farm,” as she often referred to Paulsdale in her adulthood, created a foundation for her lifelong civil rights work. Alice’s parents were Hicksite Quakers and raised their family with their faith’s belief in gender equality. They also impressed upon their four children their duty to work for the betterment of society.
Alice Paul attended a Quaker school in nearby Moorestown. She graduated first in her class in 1901. As Paul said in a 1974 interview, "When the Quakers were founded, one of their principles was, and is, equality of the sexes. So, I never had any other idea…the principle was always there.”
The Quaker belief that women and men were equal, something of an anomaly for the time, undoubtedly accounts for the number of Quakers active in the fight for suffrage. Both Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott, leaders of the early suffrage movement, were Quakers whom Paul admired and considered role models.
Alice Paul enrolled at Swarthmore College, a co-educational school co-founded by her maternal grandfather, Judge William Parry, in 1864. Parry believed that women and men should receive an equal, Quaker-inspired education. Parry had sent his youngest and only daughter, Tacie, to study at Swarthmore in 1878. Tacie completed three years at the Quaker college but had to leave in 1881, one year short of graduation, due to her marriage to William Paul. At that time, married women were not allowed to attend the school. Years later, as a parent, Tacie ensured that each of her children was able to attend.
During her years at Swarthmore, Alice was taught by leading female academics, including mathematics professor Susan Cunningham, one of the first women admitted to the American Mathematics Association.
Alice was also an active and civically engaged student. She served as a member of the Executive Board of Student Government, was named Ivy Poetess, and spoke at her commencement ceremony. She also participated in a variety of sports, including field hockey, tennis, and basketball. In her college yearbook, Halcyon, Alice was dubbed, “An open-hearted maiden, true and pure.” While this description of her is an indication of the values most appreciated in the early 20th century, her father hinted at Alice’s resilient advocate spirit in a statement about his eldest daughter: “Well, when there is a job to be done, I bank on Alice.”
After a short return to Paulsdale, Alice relocated to New York City to work in the settlement movement and pursue instruction in the fledgling field of social work. At the New York School of Philanthropy, Alice attended lectures and worked with people in the field to improve the lives of others. Her work experiences highlighted the economic and gender disparities present in society, inspiring her to pursue the study of economics overseas.
In 1907 Paul left New York and moved to Birmingham, England to continue social work at the Woodbrooke Settlement. Although Alice’s upbringing was steeped in the ideals of suffrage and equality, it was her time in England that transformed her from a reserved Quaker girl into a militant suffragist.
One day Alice stopped to observe a crowd loudly heckling a woman speaking in support of extending voting rights to women in Britain. The woman was Christabel Pankhurst, daughter of England's most radical suffragette, Emmeline Pankhurst. Jeered so loudly that people could no longer hear her, Pankhurst was forced from the stage by the unruly crowd. Appalled at the crowd's behavior, Alice made her way over to the woman and introduced herself.
Paul returned to the United States imbued with the radicalism of the English suffrage movement and a determination to reshape and re-energize the American campaign for women’s right to vote. While studying at the University of Pennsylvania, she joined the National American Women's Suffrage Association (NAWSA), one of the leading national organizations working for women's suffrage. Quickly appointed to lead the Congressional Committee, Paul took charge of working for a federal suffrage amendment, which was a secondary goal of NAWSA's leadership who prioritized progress state by state.
In 1912, Alice joined her NAWSA colleagues Lucy Burns and Crystal Eastman to move to Washington, D.C. With little funding and in true Pankhurst style, Paul and Burns quickly organized a publicity event guaranteed to gain maximum national attention. The well-matched pair designed a massive and elaborate parade for thousands of women to march up Pennsylvania Avenue on March 3, 1913, the day before the inaugural parade of President-elect Woodrow Wilson.
Inez Milholland, a lawyer, activist, and socialite devoted to the cause, led the suffrage procession along the parade route. Symbolically dressed in Greek robes and astride a white horse, Millholland and the suffragists quickly found the parade route lined with hundreds of male onlookers who were not supportive of their cause. The parade made it only a few blocks before the crowd began to attack the suffragists, first by shouting insults and obscenities and then with physical violence and assault. Police officers stood by and watched.
The melee made headlines in newspapers across the country the following day, and women’s suffrage became a popular topic of discussion among politicians and the public, including the press.
Although NAWSA's president, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Alice Paul shared the goal of universal suffrage, their political strategies had significant differences. Where NAWSA concentrated its effort on state campaigns, Paul wanted to focus all energy and funding to advance a constitutional amendment. While NAWSA endorsed President Wilson and looked to members of the Democratic Party as allies, Paul, nodding to her training in Britain with the Pankhursts, wanted to hold Wilson and the Democratic party accountable for women’s continued struggle to gain the vote.
In 1914, the tension between Alice and NAWSA leadership led Paul and others who supported a constitutional amendment to sever ties to the NAWSA. In 1916, Paul and her supporters formed a new party, the National Woman's Party (NWP). The NWP moved quickly to organize public events to bring attention to their work. In 1917, the NWP organized the first picketing of the White House in the nation's history. Until that moment, no one had dared to protest the President of the United States publicly.
The picketers were called “Silent Sentinels” because they stood quietly, not speaking or interacting with passersby. Groups of women stood outside the gates of the White House six days a week, no matter the weather. In their non-violent protest, the suffragists held hand-crafted banners inscribed with incendiary phrases directed toward President Wilson. The banners asked, "Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?" and often quoted President Wilson himself about liberty and democracy. Initially, President Wilson treated the picketers with condescension, tipping his hat to them as he passed by. His attitude changed when the United States entered World War I in 1917.
As the war effort escalated and calls for unity and patriotism spread across the nation, few believed the suffragists would dare continue to picket a wartime president. Nevertheless, Alice Paul was determined not to lose the momentum and attention the Silent Sentinels had garnered for the movement. Despite criticism from suffragists inside and outside of the National Woman's Party, the group chose to continue their daily picketing of the White House. The suffragists upped the ante and used the moment to call out Wilson's support for democracy abroad while not providing a full democracy at home. The picketers crafted new banners calling the President "Kaiser Wilson."
Many viewed the suffragists' wartime protests as unpatriotic. The Silent Sentinels, including Alice Paul, began to be attacked by angry mobs crowded around them, spilling out onto the street. Police began arresting the suffragists on the charge of "obstructing traffic." Many women were jailed when they refused to pay the imposed fine, saying they had broken no laws while exercising their first amendment rights. Despite the danger of bodily harm and imprisonment, the suffragists continued their demonstrations for equality.
Over several weeks, 168 suffragists were arrested and sent to jail or prison. Many of the apprehended suffragists were sent to area prisons, including the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia. While jailed, Alice and the suffragists demanded they be treated as political prisoners. Officials ignored their request, leading Paul and several suffragists to begin a hunger strike. As she had experienced during her hunger strikes in England, prison officials began brutal forced feedings, sometimes as many as three times per day.
Outside the prison, arrests of suffragists continued. Many, including older frail women, were beaten, pushed, and held in cold, unsanitary, rat-infested cells. In an attempt to have Alice declared insane, prison officials moved her to a sanitarium.
News of the prison conditions began to leak out. As newspapers began to report on the hunger strikes, sympathy for the prisoners brought many to support their cause. Public demand for the women’s release grew. On November 27 and 28, 1917, all the suffragists were released
Toward the end of 1917, President Wilson, facing increased pressure and growing criticism of the suffragists’ treatment in prison, reversed his position and announced his support for a suffrage amendment as a “war measure.” In the following months, Wilson met with members of Congress to gain support from elected officials to vote for the suffrage amendment.
Amidst growing support, in 1919, members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate voted to pass the 19th Amendment and sent it to the states for ratification. Three-fourths of states was necessary to ratify the amendment. Following an initial wave of support, in 1920, the battle for ratification landed in Tennessee. Most elected officials in the state legislature did not support the amendment. In a very tight vote, the deciding vote was cast by 24-year-old Harry Burn, the youngest member of the Tennessee assembly. Burns had intended to vote "No" but changed his mind after receiving a telegram from his mother asking him to vote "Yes" to support women's suffrage.
The 19th Amendment was ratified by the required three-fourths of states by August 18, 1920.
I encourage you to read more about the Alice Paul Institute and learn about their continued activism supporting equality and women's rights.
Source Citations:
About Alice Paul – Alice Paul Institute
ALICE PAUL AND THE HUNGER STRIKE THAT CHANGED AMERICA | Malibu, CA Patch