Alice Paul: History Every Man and Woman in America Should Know

The Declaration of Independence that founded this country was based on the principle that 'all men are created equal." It took almost 150 years before women began to make really substantial strides toward a share in that equality, and it was due to women like Alice Paul.

Yet, when I took a small, informal poll among readers hn Gather a social network consisting mostly of educated and intelligent members, the one woman out of a list of 12 that most people had never heard of was Alice Paul.

And I am not criticizing anyone for not knowing. Until a few years ago, I had never heard of her, either.

And now I wonder: how is it that women's history is so unimportant in this country that a woman who changed the world for us so much is not taught in schools? Hardly ever mentioned on history programs or in history books?

Alice Paul was born in 1885 iand she lived until 1977. She died during the lifetime of many of us, and yet we don't know who she was!

Before 1920, women in America did not have the vote. They had absolutely no say in politics, and men believed firmly that they should not worry their pretty little heads about such things, but just stay home and care for their children and their households and let the men take care of all the rest.

Alice Paul, Lucy Stone, and some other women were incredibly brave in standing up to this entirely male-oriented system and demanding the vote for women. And they won it in 1920, with the 19th Amendment.

But do you know what they went through to get it for us?

In a time when very few women attended college, Paul not only graduated from Swarthmore College, but studied in England and then returned home to the States to receive a PhD in political science from the University of Pennsylvania.. in 1912!

Also in 1912, Paul became deeply involved in the sufragette movement. She joined the National American Women Suffrage Association and was named Chairman of the Congressional Committee in Washington, D.C. They were carrying on the battle begun in the late 1800's by Susan B. Anthony and others.

But just to say that they fought for the vote sounds so dry. What they really did was to march, to shout, to strike, to tie themselves to fences, to go to jail, and to go on hunger strikes. In 1917, they were the first strikers to picket the White House. They used many of the nonviolent methods later used by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950's and 60's.

In July of 1917, Alice Paul and others were arrested for their actions and put in Occoquain Workhouse in Virginia, where they were tortured. In protest of their treatment, Paul went on a hunger strike. She was moved to the psychiatric ward and fed raw eggs through a tube against her will. When word of this reached the outside, women everywhere joined the strike and the press coverage put so much pressure on the Wilson presidency that he was forced to call for the passage of the 19th Amendment, and it was passed in 1920.

When Alice Paul was released, she continued her work, drafting an Equal Rights Amendment in 1923. Unfortunately, this amendment did not even reach the House until 1972, and it was defeated then, and has never been added to the Constitution to this day.

But Alice Paul was a key player in the battle for votes for women. Without her bravery and unending courage in the face of horrible odds, and that of the many women who fought with her, women would not have the ability now to take part in choosing who leads us, or the freedom and power that that privelege gives us in other areas, such as business and our personal lives, by forcing men to even consider that women had rights, at all.

And now you know who she was. Now, how do we get her into the books and the schools?

To learn more about the Suffrage Movement, I highly recommend viewing the HBO documentary, Iron Angels, which is available on DVD.