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Suffragist Alice Paul's Birthday
The League of Women Voters of Arapahoe and Douglas Counties recognizes the efforts of suffragist Alice Paul on her birthday on Tuesday, January 11.
In January 1917, Paul and over 1,000 “Silent Sentinels” began 18 months of picketing in front of the White House in support of a constitutional amendment granting women voting rights. They endured verbal and physical attacks. Paul was arrested for blocking traffic and sentenced to 7 months in jail. While in jail, she organized a hunger strike in protest. She and other suffragists were force-fed with stomach tubes and threatened with admission to an insane asylum.
By 1918 Woodrow Wilson supported suffrage. Two years later, the Senate, House, and required 36 states approved the 19th amendment. In 2004 a film, “Iron Jawed Angels,” was made about Alice Paul (and other brave women) and these events. This film can be viewed on YouTube here:
Think she was done after the 19th Amendment was ratified? Not at all!
In 1973, Alice Paul and the National Women's Party authored the Equal Rights Amendment to guarantee women constitutional protection from discrimination. She is quoted as saying, “I never doubted that equal rights was the right direction. Most reforms, most problems are complicated. But to me there is nothing complicated about ordinary equality.” We think that today Alice Paul would be disappointed to know that the ERA Amendment has not yet been passed. The League of Women Voters of the U.S. continues to press for passage of the ERA Amendment.
The LWV of Oxford, Ohio has a webpage with details of Alice Paul's life here.
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