Alice Paul

Alice Paul was a key figure in gaining the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. She devoted her life to advocating for women's rights, and is known for her outstanding organization of militant protests.

From a very young age, Paul gained much influence from her parents. Her father was a wealthy Quaker businessman, and her mother was a suffragist, who even brought Paul along to the meetings. Both her parents supported gender equality, education for women, and women's access to work. Paul was very driven in her pursuit of an education: she received a biology degree from a Quaker college, a Master of the Arts degree in sociology from the New York School of Philanthropy (now Columbia University), studied social work in England, then earned a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.

Paul joined the suffrage movement while studying in England with a fellow American, Lucy Burns. There she learned militant protest tactics, such as picketing and hunger strikes. Militant feminism was a more radical form that called for the reordering of society to eliminate male supremacy. Back in the U.S., both Paul and Burns joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1912. Paul led the Washington, D.C., chapter. However, Paul wanted to lobby Congress for a constitutional amendment while the NAWSA focused on state-by-state campaigns. Paul split from the organization and formed the National Woman's Party to address her aims. She organized parades and pickets in support of suffrage that were inspired by the British movement. Her first one was in Washington, D.C., the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration in 1913, and it turned out to be her largest protest. Unfortunately, Wilson told Paul and some other suffragists that it was not time for a constitutional amendment when they met with him a few weeks later.

Paul was determined to lobby Congress and founded the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage. In 1917, Paul and over 1,000 suffragists picketed in front of the White House for eighteen months. This group of women organized by Paul and the National Woman's Party became known as the "silent sentinels". Paul was sentenced to jail for seven months, which violated her right to free speech and peaceful assembly. There she organized a hunger strike, and in response was threatened to be force-fed and sent to an insane asylum. Despite these difficulties, newspaper reports of Paul's treatment accumulated public sympathy and gained support for suffrage. Wilson announced his support for the movement in 1918. Two years later the 19th Amendment was passed.

After the fight for the vote was over, Paul and her followers focused their efforts on constitutional protection from discrimination, as well as other women's rights issues. She wrote and spent her life advocating for the Equal Rights Amendment, but fell three states short of getting it passed by 1982. Nonetheless, her legacy will not be forgotten.