​"When men are denied justice, they go to war. This is our war, only we are fighting it with banners instead of guns."

Library of Congress [Public Domain], via Wikimedia Commons

• WOMEN'S RIGHTS ACTIVIST
  
• Helped ensure passage of the Nineteenth Amendment by leading the FIRST successful non-violent movement for social change in America

• Received an extensive formal education in both the United States and England, studying political science and economics
• Worked in the British Women's Social and Political Union, Emmeline Pankhurst's suffrage organization
• Moved back to the U.S. in 1912, and joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association, or NAWSA (this was the successor organization to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony's National Woman Suffrage Association)
• Enlisted the help of Jane Addams to convince NAWSA to assign her leadership of a committee in charge of submitting a Constitutional amendment for women's suffrage on an annual basis; this was considered by NAWSA to be a symbolic act, as the the organization was committed to achieving suffrage through state-by-state campaigns
• Paul, however, believed that a federal amendment was the only way to win the right to vote, and she reshaped the committee into the Congressional Union, which in 1916 split from NAWSA to become the independent National Woman's Party (NWP)
• Orchestrated a campaign that employed many strategies that were denounced by fellow suffragists, such as boycotting the Democratic party (which opposed a federal amendment), burning copies of speeches that President Wilson gave lauding democracy, and burning figures of Wilson himself in effigy
• Despite the purely nonviolent nature of Paul's strategy, the NWP was dubbed the "militant wing" of the suffrage movement because of the often controversial actions her organization took
• Began organizing groups of women to picket the White House, and didn't stop during World War I, a move that was considered unpatriotic and condemned by public opinion; Paul and her followers offered no resistance to repeated physical assault at the hands of mobs, receiving no protection from police -- in fact, those who tried to defend the picketers were arrested
• Those picketing were arrested numerous times for "inciting violence" and "obstructing sidewalk traffic;" those jailed engaged in hunger strikes, and were force-fed by guards
• After the Nineteenth Amendment was passed, Paul wrote the Equal Rights Amendment, which would make any sex discrimination illegal, and spent the rest of her life lobbying for its passage; it was approved by Congress in 1972 but only recently ratified by enough states to become part of the Constitution, resulting in a legal battle over whether it will become law

Night of Terror

In October 1917, Paul, along with five other NWP members, were sentenced to an unprecedented seven months in prison; because Paul refused to eat, she was admitted to an insane asylum against her will. To protest Paul being institutionalized, forty-one women from across the country formed a picket line on November 10. Thirty-five of the women were arrested and given sentences that ranged from six days to six months. After being taken to Occoquan Workhouse, many of them were brutally beaten by guards in what became known as the "Night of Terror." The dedication of these women, coupled with their willingness to endure physical harm for their cause, eventually helped sway public opinion in support of a federal amendment

Bibliography: Adams, Katherine H. and Michael L. Keene. Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008. Print.
Haag, Matthew. (2018, May 31). The Equal Rights Amendment Was Just Ratified by Illinois. What Does That Mean? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/31/us/equal-rights-amendment-illinois.html

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