Alice Paul: Suffragist

Alice Paul, born Jan. 11, 1885 was an iconic leader of the American Suffrage Movement. Despite being jailed and tortured in prison, Paul never stopped fighting for passage of the 19th Amendment and the still not passed, Equal Rights Amendment.

Fifteen years before the beginning of the Twentieth Century, advocating for women’s rights was a radical concept in the United States. Not that long ago, American women were prohibited from owning property, signing contracts or able to keep the meager wages earned from the limited kinds of jobs they were allowed to hold.

And, except for a few Western states that allowed women to vote in state elections, they certainly couldn’t vote. It may surprise you to learn that men were not the only ones opposed to giving women equal economic, social and political rights. Many women didn’t want anything to change either.

This was the world that Alice Paul, future champion of equal rights for women, was born into on Jan. 11, 1885. Her fierce, lifelong fight for women’s rights would change the status quo forever.

Paul was the eldest child of Tacie and William Paul, a wealthy banker. Along with her sister and two brothers, Paul led a sheltered, comfortable childhood on the family’s 265-acre farm in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. Her parents were devout Quakers, a faith that stressed plain living, pacifism and gender equality. Paul remembers accompanying her mother to suffrage meetings as a child. She also was a brilliant student who graduated from her Friends’ high school early. At 22, she had degrees from Swarthmore and the University of Pennsylvania and had accepted fellowships to work for two social service agencies in New York City.

Paul headed to London in 1907, planning to do more post-grad research. But, things changed when she met Christabel Pankhurst, one of the leading British suffragettes who had been invited to speak at Paul’s college campus. At a meeting, hecklers shouted and carried on throughout the event, preventing Pankhurst from being heard. Paul was appalled by the raucous and rude behavior, but more than that, she was baffled.

“When I had gone to the suffrage meetings in America, there was no oppositions at the meetings,” she wrote. “Everybody…all the Quakers were in accord… equality of the sexes. It wasn’t a subject for discussion.”

At that meeting, Paul became “woke,” in today’s terms. Gender equality--something she had taken for granted--was suddenly an issue that would affect her life and the lives of other women. She later recalled, “…when I saw this outbreak of hostility, I thought, “That’s one group now I want to throw in all the strength I can give to help.”

Pankhurst and her mother, Emmeline, were the leaders of the Women’s Political and Social Union, a militant British suffrage group, whose motto was “deeds not words.” Their headline -grabbing tactics included marching, heckling, smashing windows and postal boxes, spitting at police, throwing rocks, bombing iconic locations in London and confronting politicians. Anyone who joined the movement had to sign a statement saying they would be willing to be arrested for their actions.

Paul recalls hesitating before mailing off the application, but it only lasted for a moment. Vowing to put herself on the line for women’s suffrage, she was arrested several times and jailed on three occasions. The last time was only a few months before the end of her stay in London.

In November 1909, Paul and another protestor disguised themselves as maids to attend a state banquet attended by Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and Winston Churchill, then a cabinet minister. Just as Asquith began his speech, the women shouted: “Votes for Women!”

They were promptly arrested and taken to jail. There, the suffragettes continued their protests. Contending that they were political prisoners and not criminals, they refused to wear prison uniforms. They went on a hunger strike, leading guards to brutally force-feed them.

By early 1910, Paul was back in the U.S., recovered from her hunger strike, physically weak but mentally toughened. Her experience had been reported in the news, making her a celebrity among American suffragettes. Paul began to use and adapt some of the Pankhurst’s tactics to energize the American movement.

In 1913, she and fellow suffragette, Lucy Burns, organized the first Women’s Suffrage Parade in Washington, D.C.. The march attracted about 8,000 women, from across the country to march up Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the Treasury Building. The marchers were overwhelmingly white. About 50 African American women participated and there was controversy about whether they should march with their state delegations or be segregated to the back of the parade.

A suffragette named Inez Milholland, led the parade dressed in a white gown, astride a white horse. Strategically timed for maximum publicity, the parade was held the day before Woodrow Wilson’s presidential inauguration. Along the parade route, women held signs demanding a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote. While the marchers were peaceful, the mostly male crowd, quickly grew hostile. The marchers were jostled, tripped, jeered, spat on and assaulted. With no efforts made by the police to stop the violence, more than 100 women were injured and hospitalized.

After the Parade, Paul supported more aggressive tactics, yet stopped short of carrying out acts of violence, perhaps due to the influence of her Quaker upbringing and its emphasis on civil disobedience.

In 1917, Paul’s National Women’s Party began picketing the White House six days a week. Calling themselves the Silent Sentinels, they stood outside gates holding signs asking, “Mr. President, what will you do for Women’s Suffrage?”

It was a controversial move since no one had ever publicly confronted a president before. When the United States entered World War I, some called the picketing unpatriotic. Suffragettes were arrested for refusing to give up their pickets and obstructing traffic. They were sent to a prison in Virginia where they were tortured and force fed.

There were reports of older suffragettes being beaten, held in cold, dirty, rat -infested cells. Reports of their treatment horrified Wilson, who finally gave his public support to women’s suffrage in 1918, saying that the role of women in the war justified giving them the vote. Still, another two years would elapse before all the required states would ratify the amendment. In that period, Paul continued to put pressure on Wilson for not influencing the process along quicker.

In 1919, suffragettes burned a two-foot-high effigy of Wilson in Lafayette Park, directly in front of the White House. Finally, on August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment guaranteeing a woman’s right to vote became law.

The 19th Amendment remains a crown jewel in the fight for women’s equality in the U.S. It was not perfect, however. African American women and other disenfranchised groups would not be guaranteed the right to vote until the 1965 Voting Rights Act and other citizenship reforms.

“The thing I think that was the most useful thing I ever did, was having a part in getting the vote for all women,” Paul said modestly. Justly called “the architect of the women’s movement,” Paul continued to fight for women’s equality, including gender equality in the United Nations Charter and the establishment of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

She wrote the original language for the Equal Rights Amendment and pushed for its passage, but the fight for the ERA continues.
For more information: https://www.eracoalition.org/

©2023 Alice Look
Co-founder, Remarkable Women Project.org
Executive Producer, Remarkable Women Project