Alice Paul Essay -- essays research papers

Alice Paul was born on January 11,1885, in Moorestown, New Jersey. Her father, who died when Alice was sixteen, was a businessman, banker, and property owner. The Pauls lived in the small Quaker community of Moorestown. One of the beliefs of the Quakers was equality of the sexes. As a young girl, Alice attended the Quaker suffrage meetings with her mother. Alice Pauls' father left them enough money so she could attend the exclusive Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. She graduated in 1905 as a biology major, but after discovering politics in her senior year, she went on to attend the New York School of Philanthropy. She majored in sociology, and spent all of her spare time working for the woman suffrage in New York. In 1907, Paul earned a master's degree in sociolgy. She went to England to continue her work toward her doctorate degree. She was begin- ning to realize that she couldn't change the situation by social work alone, but needed to change the actual laws. Women had no voice in either England or America to change any law. The suffrage movement was different in England than in the States. British suffragists had begun wild women protests in 1905. They would sneak into male political meetings, and disrupt the meetings by shouting questions, wave banners and be arrested. As Alice Paul became more involved with the Women's Social and Political Union, she was warned of possible imprisonment. This threat did not prevent her from sneaking into political events. She was arrested ten times in England, three of which ended in prison time. While in prison, she continued to protest the government's refusal to let women vote or speak publicly, by not eating. She was force-fed for four weeks. She returned to America in 1910, where she continued her studies and her suffrage work. She brought back from England with her the same tactics used to get the attention of the newspapers and the government. She brought the wild suffragette movement back to the United States. She teamed up with Lucy Burns, who she spent prison time with in England. They went ... ...egan urging members of the House and Senate to vote for the nineteenth amendment, but kept losing. Then in October 1918, he pleaded for woman suffrage as part of the war effort. The amendment was passed in 1920, giving women the rights of citizens, including the right to vote. She did not stop there. In 1922, she received her Law degree and in 1928 formed the World Party for Equal Rights for Women. Pauls equal rights amendment was "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." Living in Switzerland, she encouraged an Equal Rights Treaty and a World code of Law. Equality was then written into the United Nations Charter. Paul fought for equal rights the rest of her life, nationaly and internationally. In1977, at the age of 93, she died in her childhood town of Moorestown. Alice Paul was a remarkable, unstop- pable feminist and social reformer, who paved the road we now walk.