Alice Paul

Author of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Cover to the program for the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession (Adam Cuerden, Wikipedia)

Alice Paul (1885 - 1977)

Feminist. Suffragist. Political Strategist.

Alice Paul was born in 1885 in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, and raised in a Quaker family that believed women and men were equals. After studying in England, where she was arrested alongside British suffragettes, she came home convinced that American women needed to push harder.

In 1913 she organized a suffrage parade in Washington, D.C., the day before President Wilson's inauguration. She went on to found the National Woman's Party, and in 1917 her "Silent Sentinels" became the first group to picket the White House. Paul and others were jailed. When she went on a hunger strike, guards force-fed her. The public outcry helped push Congress toward the Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1920.

Paul did not stop at the vote. In 1923 she introduced the Equal Rights Amendment, and she worked for it for the rest of her life. She died in 1977, still waiting for it to pass.

I visited the Alice Paul House in Mount Laurel as part of my research on how Paul and Elizabeth Cady Stanton adapted their tactics to their eras. That paper was accepted by The Curieux Review.

Alice Paul raises glass in front of a banner to celebrate the ratification of the 19th Amendment, August 26, 1920.

National Woman's Party Collection

Library of Congress

HerWorldNow.com

Learn about women's voices today