Passage II

Alice Paul and the Nineteenth Amendment

Soon after arriving in England in 1907 to study social work, New Jersey–born suffragist and political activist Alice Paul joined the movement of Emmeline Pankhurst, being a vocal British suffragist. Paul admired Pankhurst’s direct, action-oriented approach, who raised public and legislative interest in women’s voting rights. The campaign for women’s suffrage in the United States—relying in recent years on (18) polite appeals by letter—while largely ignored. Upon her return home in 1910, Paul sought to reshape the American campaign.

Paul became a member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), she hoped to energize that organization. She was soon angered by NAWSA’s support of President Woodrow Wilson, whom remained near silent about women’s right to vote. Paul left the group and formed the National Woman’s Party. The NWP was co-founded by someone Paul had met in London when both were arrested during a suffrage demonstration. On January 11, 1917, Paul and several other women marched in front of the White House, waved banners and shouting, boldly making clear their belief that since women, half of the population, could not vote; the United States was not a true democracy.

[1] For months, the protesters marched seven hours a day, five days a week—and their numbers grew. [2] Rather than pay a fine, many of the women, including Paul, chose time in a cold, unsanitary jail. [3] At first, the president conceded and tipped his hat to them as his car passed through the White House gate, but six months later he had them arrested for obstructing traffic. (26)

Under public pressure, Wilson pardoned the prisoners. Still, the women’s protest and imprisonment, as Paul had hoped, significantly raised public sympathy for the suffragists’ cause. Wilson decided, finally, in a historic move, to reverse his stance, and endorse the suffrage amendment introduced in Congress in 1878. In 1919 Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment, and by 1920 women in the United States had the right to vote.