Home › Reform & Rights › Civil Rights & Social Reform
Alice Paul
1885–1977 · 92 years Tier II
Force-fed in two countries before she wrote the Equal Rights Amendment
Her mother belonged to the National American Woman Suffrage Association and took her along, which is how a Quaker girl from a farm called Paulsdale in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, learned what a movement looks like from inside. She finished first at Moorestown Friends, took a 1905 biology degree from Swarthmore, a college her grandfather helped found, and a master's at Pennsylvania. England did the rest. Hearing Christabel Pankhurst speak at Birmingham converted her to the militant wing. London police arrested her seven times and jailed her three, once for hiding in the Guild Hall dressed as a charwoman until Asquith rose to speak. Warders force-fed her twice a day. She came home in January 1910 with a ruined stomach and a method.
On March 3, 1913, the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration, she put roughly 8,000 women onto Pennsylvania Avenue and let the country watch the police fail to protect them. Out of a strategic fight with NAWSA she built the Congressional Union, then the National Woman's Party in 1916, and in January 1917 she sent the first political pickets ever to stand at a White House gate. About 2,000 women took shifts six days a week for two years. The Nineteenth Amendment passed in 1920. She then went and took a law degree in 1922 and two more by 1928, and in 1923 she and Crystal Eastman wrote the Equal Rights Amendment. In 1964 she worked with Representative Howard Smith to get the word sex into Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
In October 1917 she arranged to be given a seven-month sentence, struck against the conditions in the District Jail by refusing food, and was moved to the psychiatric ward and fed raw eggs through a tube. A month later guards at Occoquan beat the imprisoned suffragists badly enough that her party took the treatment to court. The single-issue discipline that made her effective also drew the line narrow. Organizers of her own 1913 procession pressed to segregate the delegations, and Ida B. Wells was asked not to walk with Illinois, which she did anyway. After 1920 the amendment Paul wrote split her from her former allies. The League of Women Voters fought the ERA because it would void the hours and conditions laws that shielded working women. Paul called those laws legalized inequality.
A stroke in 1974 put her in a nursing home under a nephew's guardianship, and he emptied the estate. A fund for indigent Quakers paid for the rest. She died on July 9, 1977, at a Quaker home in Moorestown, less than a mile from her birthplace, now a National Historic Landmark. Her amendment cleared Congress in 1972 carrying a seven-year ratification deadline she predicted would sink it, and it did. Nevada ratified in 2017, Illinois in 2018, Virginia in 2020 as the 38th state, and the National Archives still declines to certify the result. Joe Biden called it the law of the land in January 2025, which changed nothing legally. The argument is 100 years old and unfinished.
Lifespan
Alice Paul's life against the full span of the corpus.
Notable works
-
The Legal Position of Women in Pennsylvania
book
Her doctoral dissertation, arguing the vote was the pivot of everything else 1912 -
Woman Suffrage Procession
other
Roughly 8,000 marchers on Pennsylvania Avenue, the day before Wilson took office 1913 -
National Woman's Party
company
Built out of the Congressional Union after the split with NAWSA 1916 -
The Silent Sentinels
other
The first political picket of a White House gate, kept up six days a week for two years 1917 -
Equal Rights Amendment
law
Written with Crystal Eastman and reworded by Paul in 1943 1923 -
The sex clause of Title VII
law
She worked for two decades with Representative Howard Smith to get the word in 1964
Life in brief
with age at each point- 1905 aged ~20 Takes a biology degree from Swarthmore Her grandfather had helped found the college.
- November 9, 1909 aged 24 Hides in the London Guild Hall dressed as a cleaning woman She and Amelia Brown interrupted the prime minister and drew a month of hard labor at Holloway.
- January 1910 aged 24 Comes home to recover and to plan an American campaign Force-feeding in Holloway had left her with severe gastritis.
- March 3, 1913 aged 28 Puts 8,000 women on Pennsylvania Avenue the day before the inauguration Police stood by while the crowd closed in. One senator recorded the badge numbers of 22 idle officers.
- January 1917 aged 31 The Silent Sentinels take up position at the White House gates
- October 20, 1917 aged 32 Begins a seven-month sentence she deliberately courted A hunger strike moved her to the psychiatric ward, where she was fed raw eggs through a tube.
- August 26, 1920 aged 35 The Nineteenth Amendment takes effect Paul toasted it with grape juice.
- 1923 aged ~38 The Equal Rights Amendment is introduced in Congress Renamed the Alice Paul Amendment in 1943, with the wording still used.
- July 9, 1977 aged 92 Dies at 92 in a Quaker home in Moorestown, New Jersey
Related
Contemporaries
Reform & Rights, born within 25 years
Eleanor Roosevelt 1884–1962Reform & RightsFirst Lady and human rights advocate who chaired the UN committee that drafted the Universal Declaration.
Aldo Leopold 1887–1948Reform & RightsEcologist whose “land ethic” became foundational to modern environmental thought.
A. Philip Randolph 1889–1979Reform & RightsLabor and civil-rights leader who pressured presidents to desegregate defense work and the armed forces.
Helen Keller 1880–1968Reform & RightsDeafblind author and lecturer who became the leading American advocate for blind and disabled people.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas 1890–1998Reform & RightsWriter and activist whose advocacy was central to preserving the Florida Everglades as a national ecological treasure.
Margaret Sanger 1879–1966Reform & RightsBirth-control advocate who transformed reproductive health access while leaving a deeply contested legacy involving eugenics.