FACTS ABOUT ALICE PAUL

1. She was born to Quaker parents on Jan. 11, 1885. She was a descendant of William Penn.  Her parents were progressives who believed in gender equality and education for women.  Her mother was a member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and brought young Alice to the meetings.
2. She was very well-educated. She graduated from college with a degree in biology in 1907.  She got a PhD in sociology in 1910.  She got her law degree in 1922 and a doctorate in civil law in 1928.
3. After graduating from college, she spent a year working in a settlement house in New York City. She then went to England to study social work, but she quickly got involved in the suffrage movement.  Her mentor was Emmeline Pankhurst.  She met Lucy Burns and they brought the ideas of civil disobedience back to America.  Those ideas included picketing and stunts to get publicity.  One of the stunts was when Alice and Amelia Brown disguised themselves as cleaning women to get into a banquet hall.  They hid out until the banquet began.  When the Prime Minister rose to speak, Brown threw a shoe through a stained glass window.  They both yelled “Votes for women!”  They were arrested.
4. In England, she was arrested seven times and sent to prison three of those times. One time, she refused to undress.  The women matrons were unable to force her so male guards were called in.  The resulting news stories of this shocking act brought sympathy for the suffragettes.  All three times she was imprisoned, she went on hunger strikes.  The last time, she was force fed.  This resulted in gastritis and she suffered from colds and flu the rest of her life.
5. When she returned to America, she joined NAWSA. In 1913, the day before Pres. Wilson’s inauguration, Paul organized a parade in Washington that had 8,000 women carrying banners on Pennsylvania Avenue.  Around 500,000 spectators viewed the parade.  The police did not provide sufficient forces and men in the crowd became belligerent.  It was nearly a riot.  Most of the police that were on the parade route just stood and watched the harassment.  The incident gained national attention and sympathy.
6. Paul soon grew impatient with Carrie Chapman Catt’s strategy of lobbying states to pass suffrage. Paul and Burns wanted more direct action like what the English suffragettes had done.  They created the Congressional Union for Women’s Suffrage in 1913 and this evolved into the National Women’s Party.
7. In 1917, Paul got the idea of the “Silent Sentinels”. To put pressure on Pres. Wilson to fulfill his promise of supporting a suffrage amendment, NWA members picketed the White House.  After America’s entry into WWI, many viewed this as unpatriotic.  The banner-holding women were harassed by men and arrested for obstruction of traffic.  Sent to a workhouse, they were mistreated by the jailers.  Paul went on another hunger strike and was force fed.  Raw eggs were poured into her stomach through a tube.  The resulting bad publicity forced Wilson to back down and he finally agreed to push for the 19^th Amendment.
8. After women’s suffrage was achieved, Alice continued to campaign for women’s rights. She helped write the Equal Rights Amendment, which was first introduced in Congress in 1923.  When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was proposed, she lobbied to have sex discrimination included in it.

 https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/alice-paul

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alice-Paul

https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/alice-paul

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Paul