Alice Stokes Paul (1885–1977) was an American suffragist, feminist, and women’s rights activist. She first proposed an equal rights amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits sex discrimination in the right to vote.
Born into a Quaker family in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, Paul was educated at Swarthmore College and Pennsylvania University. She was connected with the British suffragist movement while living in England. Upon returning to the U.S., she became the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) congressional committee leader. She organized a march in 1913 of several thousand women in Washington. Although her tactics did much to publicize the cause, they proved too combative for her fellow NAWSA members.
Paul left NAWSA and established the National Women’s Party; she became its leader later. Paul used civil disobedience, hunger strikes, and pickets in the struggle to gain the vote for women. Her goal was realized in the 19th Amendment (1920.)
Paul continued to work for women’s rights, organizing the World Party for Equal Rights for Women (1928) and campaigning to pass an equal rights amendment from the 1920s through the 1970s.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Alice Paul
When you put your hand to the plow, you can’t put it down until you get to the end of the row.
—Alice Paul
Topics: Perseverance, Persistence
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.
—Alice Paul
Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women.
—Alice Paul
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