Alice Paul

Alice Paul
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Name	Alice Paul
Caption	Paul in 1915
Birth date	11 January 1885
Birth place	Mount Laurel Township, New Jersey
Death date	9 July 1977
Death place	Moorestown, New Jersey
Education	Swarthmore College (BA), University of Pennsylvania (MA, PhD), Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre, London School of Economics
Occupation	Suffragist, women's rights activist
Known for	National Woman's Party, Silent Sentinels, Equal Rights Amendment

Alice Paul was a pivotal American Quaker suffragist, feminist, and women's rights activist who spearheaded the final, militant campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment. As the principal strategist and leader of the National Woman's Party, she organized confrontational protests, including the Silent Sentinels pickets of the White House, which led to her imprisonment and a highly publicized hunger strike. Paul later authored the original Equal Rights Amendment and dedicated her life to the global cause of women's equality through organizations like the World Woman's Party.

Early life and education

Born into a prominent Hicksite Quaker family on a farm in Mount Laurel Township, New Jersey, Paul was imbued with the faith's tenets of gender equality and social justice from an early age. She earned a bachelor's degree in biology from Swarthmore College in 1905, an institution co-founded by her grandfather. Pursuing graduate studies in sociology, she received a Master of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania in 1907 and later a Doctor of Philosophy from the same institution. Her academic work took her to England, where she studied at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham and the London School of Economics, experiences that profoundly shaped her future activism.

Activism in the United Kingdom

While in London, Paul was radicalized by the militant tactics of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), led by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters. She participated in suffragette demonstrations, was arrested multiple times, and endured force-feeding during hunger strikes in Holloway Prison. During this period, she formed a crucial partnership with fellow American Lucy Burns, with whom she would later transform the American suffrage movement. Their experiences with the confrontational, publicity-seeking methods of the British movement provided the blueprint for their future work in the United States.

Leadership in the American suffrage movement

Returning to the United States in 1910, Paul joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and quickly assumed leadership of its Congressional Committee in Washington, D.C.. Dissatisfied with NAWSA's state-by-state approach, she and Burns founded the more militant Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, which evolved into the National Woman's Party. Paul masterminded the Silent Sentinels, who picketed the White House daily during World War I, an unprecedented act of political defiance. Arrested and imprisoned in the Occoquan Workhouse, Paul led a hunger strike that resulted in brutal force-feeding, generating public sympathy and pressuring President Woodrow Wilson and Congress. Her strategic focus on a federal constitutional amendment was ultimately vindicated with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.

Campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment

Believing the vote was merely the first step, Paul authored the original Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 1923, famously stating, "We shall not be safe until the principle of equal rights is written into the framework of our government." She earned three law degrees from American University and the University of Pennsylvania to better advocate for legal equality. As chair of the National Woman's Party, she lobbied tirelessly for the ERA's introduction in every session of Congress for nearly five decades. Her work expanded internationally through the founding of the World Woman's Party, with headquarters in Geneva, to advocate for women's equality within the League of Nations and later the United Nations.

Later life and legacy

In her later decades, Paul remained a steadfast advocate for the ERA, witnessing its passage by Congress in 1972. She continued to live at her family home, Paulsdale, in New Jersey. Paul died in 1977 at the Greenleaf Extension Home in Moorestown, New Jersey, from complications of a stroke. Her legacy is monumental; she is recognized as the architect of the final, successful suffrage campaign and the mother of the Equal Rights Amendment. Key landmarks like the Belmont–Paul Women's Equality National Monument in Washington, D.C., and her portrayal on the $10 bill redesign and in films like Iron Jawed Angels, cement her status as a foundational figure in the history of American feminism and social reform.

Category:American women's rights activists Category:American suffragists Category:Quaker activists