geeky
Alice Stokes Paul was born on January 11, 1885 at Paulside, New Jersey. . Her parents were William Mickle Paul and Tacie Parry who named their child after Alice Stokes, her maternal grandmother. She was a descendant of William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania. She grew up in the Quaker tradition and learned about women's suffrage from her mother, who was a member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Paul attended Moorestown Friends School, where she graduated at the top of her class. In 1901, she began attending Swarthmore College. She graduated from Swarthmore College with a bachelor's degree in biology in 1905.
Paul completed a fellowship year at a settlement house in New York City after her graduation, and the experience made her conclude that she did not want to become a social worker. She earned a Master of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania in 1907, studying political science, sociology and economics. She then continued her studies overseas by attending the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham, England, and she also took economics classes from the University of Birmingham. She later moved to London to study sociology and economics at the London School of Economics, and joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). Paul was arrested repeatedly during suffrage demonstrations and served three jail terms.
Paul was inspired after hearing WSPU leader Christabel Pankhurst speak at the University of Birmingham. She first became involved by selling a Suffragist magazine on street corners, an activity met with considerable animosity. While in London, Paul also met Lucy Burns, a fellow American activist. The two met after being arrested in a British police station. The two women quickly rose in the ranks of the movement and when Emmeline Pankhurst (mother of Christine) attempted to spread the movement to Scotland, Paul and Burns accompanied her as her assistants.
Paul demonstrated a willingness to put herself in physical danger in order to increase the visibility of the suffrage movement. One of these activities included plans to protest a speech by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sir Edward Grey. When she confronted Grey aboyt including women in his plans for economic prosperity, Police physically removed her out of the meeting and took her to the police station where she was arrested. Another time, before a political meeting at St. Andrew's Hall in Glasgow in August 1909, Paul camped out on the roof of the hall so that she could address the crowd below. Police forced her to come down from the roof and after Paul, Burns, and fellow suffragettes attempted to enter the event, they were beaten by police. Sympathetic bystanders attempted to protect them. Paul and her fellow protesters were taken into custody and crowds gathered outside the police station demanding their release.
On November 9, 1909, the Lord Mayor of London hosted a banquet for cabinet ministers in the city's Guild Hall. Paul and Amelia Brown disguised themselves as cleaning women and entered into the building with the staff at 9:00 am. Once in the building, the women hid until the evening's event. When Prime Minister H. H. Asquith stood to speak, Brown threw her shoe through a pane of stained glass and both women yelled "Votes for women!" Both women were arrested and sentenced to one month hard labor after refusing to pay fines and damages. Paul was imprisoned at Holloway Prison in London.
While associated with the Women's Social and Political Union, Paul was arrested seven times and imprisoned three times. It was during her time in prison that she learned the tactics of civil disobedience. These included demanding to be treated as a political prisoner upon arrest, though arrested suffragettes were not afforded this special status. Once during a London arrest (after being denied political prisoner status), Paul refused to put on prisoner's clothing. The prison matrons were unable to forcibly undress her and they requested assistance from male guards. This attracted extensive press coverage for the suffrage movement.
Paul would also go on hunger strikes, an effectiveness means of publicizing their cause and gaining quick release from prison wardens. Paul was force fed, from which she later experienced ongoing health issues.
After her final London imprisonment, Paul returned to the United States in January 1910. She continued her studies at the University of Pennsylvania, earning a Ph.D. in sociology. Paul's experiences in England were well-publicized, and the American news media took notice of her activities. She began participating in National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) rallies, and in April 1910 was asked to speak at NAWSA's annual convention. Paul and Burns proposed to NAWSA leadership a campaign to gain a federal amendment guaranteeing the vote for women, which was contrary to NAWSA's state-by-state strategy. While this was rejected by most of the NAWSA leadership, Jane Addams supported their efforts, but suggested that the women moderate their plan.
One of Paul's first big projects was organizing the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession in Washington the day before President Woodrow Wilson's inauguration. Paul was determined to put pressure on Wilson. In a few weeks, Paul succeeded in gathering roughly eight thousand marchers, representing most of the country. Paul wanted the parade route go along Pennsylvania Avenue before President Wilson. Eventually the city allowed the parade route to NAWSA. The City Supervisor Sylvester claimed that the women would not be safe marching along the Pennsylvania Avenue route and strongly suggested the group move the parade. Paul demanded that Sylvester provide more police. On March 3, 1913, Congress passed a special resolution ordering Sylvester to prohibit all ordinary traffic along the parade route and "prevent any interference" with the suffrage marchers.
The parade was led by notable labor lawyer Inez Milholland dressed in white and riding a horse. The lead banner in the parade declared, "We Demand an Amendment to the United States Constitution Enfranchising the Women of the Country." Some participating groups and leaders wanted black and white women's organizations and state delegations to be segregated, but after much discussion, NAWSA decided black women could march where they wished. Over half a million people came to view the parade, and with insufficient police protection, the situation soon devolved into a near-riot. Police largely did nothing to protect the women from rioters. A senator who participated in the march later testified that he personally took the badge numbers of 22 officers who had stood idle, including 2 sergeants. Eventually, the Massachusetts and Pennsylvania national guards stepped in and students from the Maryland Agricultural College provided a human barrier to help the women pass. Boy Scouts provided first aid to the injured. The incident produced greater awareness and sympathy for NAWSA.
Paul's militant methods caused create tension between her and the leaders of NAWSA, who thought she was much too aggressive. These disagreements about strategy and tactics caused Paul to break with NAWSA. She formed the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage and, later, the National Woman's Party (NWP) in 1916. Alva Belmont, a multi-millionaire socialite at the time, was the largest donor to Paul's efforts. The NWP was accompanied by press coverage and the publication of the weekly newspaper, The Suffragist.
In the US presidential election of 1916, Paul and the National Woman's Party (NWP) campaigned in western states where women could already vote against the Woodrow Wilson and other incumbent Democrats to actively support the Suffrage Amendment. In January 1917, the NWP staged the first political protest and picketing at the White House. The pickets, participating in a nonviolent civil disobedience campaign known as the "Silent Sentinels." They dressed in white and kept silent. About 2,000 women took part in the protest over two years, six days a week, holding banners demanding the right to vote. But after the United States entered World War I in April 1917, many people viewed the picketing Silent Sentinels as disloyal. In June 1917, picketers were arrested on charges of "obstructing traffic". Over the next six months, many, including Paul, were convicted and incarcerated at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia and in the District of Columbia Jail.
President Wilson received bad publicity from the incarceration of the suffragists. He pardoned the first women arrested on July 19, two days after they had been sentenced, but reporting on the arrests and abuses continued. Suffragists continued picketing outside the White House. Some of the banners contained Wilson's own quotes. Wilson ignored these women, but his daughter Margaret waved in acknowledgement. While protesting, some men would harass and assault the women, with police never intervening on behalf of the protesters. Police once arrested other men who tried to come to the aid of the women who were getting beaten. Protesters continued being arrested and sent to Occoquan or the District Jail. Pardons were no longer offered.
Paul herself began serving a seven-month jail sentence that started on October 20, 1917. In protest of the conditions at the District Jail, Paul began a hunger strike. This led to her being moved to the prison's psychiatric ward and being force-fed raw eggs through a feeding tube. On November 14, 1917, the suffragists imprisoned at Occoquan were brutally treated by prison authorities in what became known as the "Night of Terror". The National Woman's Party (NWP) went to court to protest the treatment of the women. Despite the brutality that she experienced and witnessed, Paul courageously persisted in her protest and on November 27 and 28 all the suffragists were released from prison. Within two months Wilson announced there would be a bill on women's right to vote.
On May 21, 1919, the amendment passed the House 304 to 89, with 42 votes more than was necessary. On June 4, 1919, it was brought before the Senate and, after Southern Democrats abandoned a filibuster, 36 Republican Senators were joined by 20 Democrats to pass the amendment with 56 yeas, 25 nays, and 14 not voting. The 19th Amendment was ratified on August 26, 1920.
Following ratification, Paul enrolled at two law schools, taking day and evening classes to obtain her law degrees sooner. Paul received her law degree (LL.B) from the Washington College of Law at American University in 1922. In 1927, she earned a master of laws degree, and in 1928, a doctorate in civil law from American University.
After Suffrage, the National Women's Party (NWP) continued to lobby in Congress and abroad advocating for legal equality for women. Alice Paul and other NWP members successfully lobbied to include equality provisions into the United Nation's charter, including the phrase "the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small." Paul remained in leadership positions, officially and unofficially until she moved to Connecticut in 1974.
Once suffrage was achieved in 1920, Paul and some members of the National Woman's Party turned their attention to bringing about a constitutional guarantee of equality through the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which she had written with Crystal Eastman. Drafted and delivered to Congress in 1923, the original text of the Equal Rights Amendment (which Paul and the National Woman's Party called the "Lucretia Mott Amendment") read, "Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction." In 1943, the amendment was renamed the "Alice Paul Amendment". Its wording was changed to the version that still exists today: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."
From the start, the amendment had its detractors. Some members of the NWP began to divide their focus on a range of issues from birth control to educating newly enfranchised women voters. Some of Paul's supporters became unease about the ERA because they worried that it would erode protective legislation such as laws about working conditions or maximum hours that protected women in the workplace. The League of Women Voters (LWV) opposed the Equal Rights Amendment. Paul herself believed that protective legislation hurt women wage earners because some employers simply fired them rather than implement protections on working conditions that safeguarded women. She noted that women were paid less than men, and that they lost jobs that required them to work late nights. Paul saw the ERA was the most efficient way to ensure legal equality. She was surprised when leading suffragists such as Florence Kelley, Ethel Smith, and Jane Addams disagreed with her about the ERA.
Paul worked to change laws that altered a woman's citizenship based on that of her husband. In the U.S., women who married men from foreign countries lost their U.S. citizenship and were considered by the U.S. to be citizens of whatever country their husbands were from. She worked on behalf of the international Equal Nationality Treaty in 1933 and in the U.S. for the successful passage of the Equal Nationality Act in 1934, which let women retain their citizenship upon marriage. After the founding of the United Nations in 1945, Paul wanted to ensure that women's equality was a part of the organization's charter. She was successful in her efforts and the final version of the Declaration in 1948 opened with a reference to "equal rights of men and women".
The ERA was introduced in Congress in 1923. In wasn't until 1946 when the ERA passed by three votes in the Senate, not the majority needed for it to advance. Four years later, it would garner the Senate votes but fail in the House. When women's movement activism gained steam in the 1960s and 1970s, the bill finally passed Congress in 1972. But Paul was unhappy about the changes in the wording of the ERA that now included time limits for securing its passage, a seven year deadline. Paul correctly predicted that the inclusion of a time limit would ensure its defeat. The ERA did receive a three-year extension from Congress, it remained three states short of those needed for ratification.
States have continued to attempt to ratify the ERA long after the deadline passed, including Nevada in 2017 and Illinois in 2018. In 2017 and again in 2019, the Senate and House introduced resolutions to remove the deadline from the ERA.
In 1974, Paul suffered a stroke and was placed in a nursing home under the guardianship of her nephew. He depleted her estate and she ended up impoverished as a result. Paul was quickly aided by a fund for indigent Quakers. She died at the age of 92 on July 9, 1977, at the Greenleaf Extension Home, a Quaker facility in Moorestown, New Jersey, less than a mile from her birthplace and childhood home at Paulsdale. She is buried at Westfield Friends Burial Ground, Cinnaminson, New Jersey, U.S. People will often leave notes at her tombstone to thank her for her lifelong work on behalf of women's rights.