Alice Paul was born to a wealthy Quaker family on a small New Jersey farm. As Quakers, her parents supported gender equality, including education for women.
From a young age, she developed a passion for reading and learning. After graduating high school, top of her class, she studied biology at Swarthmore College, where she was a member of the Executive Board of Student Government. It sparked her interest in political activism, and she moved to NYC to complete a fellowship at the College Settlement House social work. She went on to study and gain multiple degrees, including a Ph.D. in sociology and three law degrees.
During a fellowship in England, Paul became involved with the militant Women’s Social and Political Union in London, first selling Suffragist magazines on street corners and then, alongside fellow American suffragette Lucy Burns, organized events, campaigns and established the Scottish branch of the organization. She learned militant protest tactics, such as picketing and hunger strikes, and became known as one who put herself in danger in public events to increase the visibility of the movement. Despite the violent experience of 7 arrests, 3 imprisonments, and 4-week force-feeding, campaigning for the cause of suffrage became her life mission.
Upon her return home in 1910, Paul joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). She became a central figure in organizing the 1913 Women March in Washington the day before President Wilson’s inauguration, in which about 8000 women marched through Pennsylvania Avenue, viewed by a half million people, many of them harassing and heckling the marchers.
In 1916, Paul’s militant approach created tension between her and the NAWSA, and she left to found the National Woman’s Party (NWP). The following year, she stood wearing a white dress and holding purple and gold banners as part of the Silent Sentinels – the first political picket in front of the White House. She was arrested but did not receive the special treatment she was supposed to as a political prisoner, living in harsh conditions and poor sanitation. With her fellow suffragist prisoners, Paul embarked on a hunger strike, for which she was transferred to the prison’s psychiatric ward, being tied up and forced fed. Her methods led to the end of the long struggle of the US suffrage movement, with the ratification of the 19th amendment, granting the legal voting right for women.
After women’s suffrage was achieved, Paul moved her efforts to the international arena: co-founding the World Woman’s Party and lobbing for gender equality. She then went back to national politics, drafting the Equal Rights Amendment, which is still in the process of ratification during the 21st century. In 1945, she lobbied for the inclusion of the equality for women clause in the United Nations proclamations, and at the age of 79, she ensured that the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had a ‘protection for women’ paragraph.
Paul was considered professionally demanding and personally conservative, including being criticized for elitism and racism within the suffragist movement. Among the many biographies of her life, little is mentioned about her personal life. Paul passed away at 92 years old in New Jersey.
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