Suffs follows the life and activism of Alice Paul. She was born in New Jersey at Paulsdale (modern Mount Laurel), only five miles from West. She was a Quaker and attended Moorestown Friends School. Her Quaker background laid the foundation for her future work in equal rights due to the Quaker’s strong belief in equality, even in the 1800s. Her mother was a member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), and they attended meetings together. Paul later attended Swarthmore College, where she studied biology. Swarthmore was partially founded by her grandfather.
Paul’s career in activism was a product of generational wealth, which allowed her to attend several institutions of higher education and often work without pay. She then attended the University of Pennsylvania. She would go into social work, but believed it only acted as a bandage for the true issues of the world. Paul later studied in England. While there, she met Emmeline Pankhurst and joined the fight for women’s suffrage, often participating in more aggressive protests, such as throwing bricks and sneaking into buildings.
After being arrested several times, Paul returned to the United States in 1910 and earned her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. She became involved with NAWSA and started campaigning for a constitutional amendment, in contrast to the organization’s state-by-state strategy at the time. She began planning the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession, a march intended to pressure President Wilson to support suffrage. The route went through Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., and gathered over 8,000 marchers.
Paul’s more militant approach created tension between herself and the leaders of NAWSA, leading her to break ties and form the National Women’s Party (NWP). In 1916, they would plan a picket outside the White House, a movement known as the “Silent Sentinels,” which lasted over two years. They would stand silently at the gates protesting, using the president’s own words about democracy, to highlight their injustice. Paul was arrested for participating and was kept as a political prisoner, living in harsh conditions and unsafe facilities. She began a hunger strike, causing her to move to a psychiatric ward and be force-fed. She was released over a month later. The 19th Amendment was passed in 1920, and Paul quickly began working on a new amendment, one that called for complete legal equality.
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), or the Lucretia Mott Amendment (It would later be renamed the Alice Paul Amendment), declared that “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” Paul believed in a single-issue campaign, hoping it would unite women around a common goal.
The ERA received criticism from those who feared that complete legal equality would make laws on working hours for women void. However, Paul argued that such laws often hurt women by preventing most employers from hiring women in the first place. The ERA was introduced in Congress in 1923, but did not pass Congress until 1972. Even then, they added a time limit requiring ratification by the states within seven years. This deadline was not met, and the amendment fell three states short of ratification. In 2017 and 2019, Congress introduced removing the deadline, which, if passed, would make the amendment viable once again.
Throughout these years, Paul worked in both the NWP and the ERA. She would also work for adding protection for women in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. She died in 1977 at the age of 92 in a Quaker facility in Moorestown, New Jersey, and is buried in Cinnaminson, New Jersey. Alice Paul was an integral part of the passing of the 19th Amendment and the expansion of women’s rights throughout the 20th century.
For more information, visit:
National Women’s History Museum
Alice Paul Center for Gender Justice
The Alice Paul Institute also offers a free self-guided audio tour around Paulsdale, as well as guided tours for a fee on Thursdays and Fridays.