Alice Paul

Biography and Efforts toward Women’s Suffrage:

Alice Paul was born on January 11, 1885 in Moorestown, New Jersey.

For a woman in the early years of the twentieth century, she received a remarkable education. She graduated from Swarthmore in 1905 and later graduated from what is now the Columbia University School of Social Work. She then received a Master’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania and studied in England at the Woodbrooke Settlement for Religious and Social Study, the University of Birmingham, and the School of Economics. She earned a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania. Finally, she received an LLB (Bachelor’s of Law) from the Washington College of Law, and an LLM and Doctor of Civil Law degree from American University.

While working her way through these degrees, she also did social work in England and the US for woman’s suffrage.

She joined other woman’s rights activists such as Emmeline Pankhurst (the founder of the British suffrage movement).

Paul went on hunger strikes to pressure the British government for woman’s suffrage and was force-fed, and was imprisoned three times while in the UK.

When she returned to the U.S., she immediately saw the need and started pushing for a constitutional amendment to allow women the right to vote. She worked within the National American Women Suffrage Association in order to better fight.

In 1913 Paul, along with fellow suffragist Lucy Burns, formed the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage, attempting to introduce more militant methods of protest, such as hose used by the Women’s Social and Political Union of Britain. Her role in the union included daily picketing in front of the White House and huge demonstrations.

On the eve of President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration she organized 8,000 women to march down Pennsylvania Avenue, from the Capitol to the White House. She and other suffragists met with Wilson later. He was somewhat interested, but feigned ignorance, insisting that the time wasn’t right.

For weeks, newspapers across the country covered the march, garnering a great deal of attention to the movement.

She and her colleagues formed the National Woman’s Party, or NWP, breaking apart from the less-radical National American Woman Suffrage Association. They ended pleading and began demanding the suffragist amendment.

Beginning in 1917, the NWP began picketing the White House. This was the first nonviolent civil disobeidience campaign. It began in January, and laster 18 months.

She and the picketers were verbally and physically abused by onlookers and unprotected by the police. At first, the police temporarily arrested and jailed the women for “obstructing traffic.” When they continued to picket, Paul was sentenced to seven months of jail time. She was placed in solitary confinement for two weeks and began a hunger strike in protest. Followers joined her in this protest. Doctors forced tube down her throat to feed her. But she didn’t give up her strike. She and others continued the fight despite this, and threats of being committed to insane asylums. The threats were not empty.

For some time, she was treated as a mental patient in the hospital. After several days she was released, but refused to stop fighting.

At the beginning of WWI she and other picketers began to protest the U.S. becoming involved in the war; they used Wilson’s quotes against him, including “Democracy Should Begin At Home.” They argued that the U.S. should grant true democracy, meaning full equal rights, at home before fighting for it abroad.

She and President Woodrow Wilson had a complicated relationship; though Wilson was well-aware of the strength of the women’s suffrage movement and even advocated for it as a war measure, he was offended by her extreme methods. By the end of 1917, he finally announced his support for women’s suffrage.

In 1922, Paul wrote the first version of the Equal Rights Amendment.

In 1938, she founded the World Party for Equal Rights of Women, also known as the World Women’s Party.

She also successfully lobbied for references to gender equality in the preamble of the United Nations Charter and in the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Her fight didn’t end when the amendment was added; in the 1950s, she worked toward the prohibition of discrimination based on gender in the workplace.

In all, Paul was arrested three times in England and three times in the U.S.

Paul never married. She died in 1977. The NWP continues to fight for women’s rights to this day.

Role in Dissident Media:

Paul, along with others in the NWP, published a weekly called The Suffragist. The weekly featured, among other stories, articles showcasing the mistreatment of women as well as achievements.

It worked to organize women in the west who could vote, as well.

Additionally, the paper was vocal about its desire not to enter into WWI; it claimed that the U.S. ought to first grant full equality to women before fighting for democracy abroad. Denying women the right to vote within the U.S. appeared contradictory to these efforts.

Legacy:

Today, there is an Alice Paul Institute. The institute was opened to commemorate the centennial of Paul’s birth, and is dedicated to honoring her legacy, as well as bring recognition to other organizations that honor women.

Sources:

http://www.moondance.org/1998/winter98/nonfiction/alice.html

http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/paul-ali.htm

http://www.brynmawr.edu/library/exhibits/suffrage/wwi.html

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USApaul.htm

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/wilson/peopleevents/p_paul.html

http://www.alicepaul.org/api.htm

http://www.umd.edu/Pictures/WomensStudies/PictureGallery/paul.html