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BY YARED PORTILLO

In print | Published September 1, 2011

Imagine a woman in her mid-thirties standing before a gold, white and purple banner, sewing a 36th star onto the double row of stars which runs down the middle.

This woman was Swarthmore graduate Alice Paul ‘01, 91 years ago, preparing to celebrate the passing of the 19th Amendment, and that star represented the state of Tennessee — the final state necessary for the passing of the amendment.

Paul was a leading activist in the fight for women’s suffrage and one of the critical players in the push for the 19th Amendment, which allowed women the right to vote.

She was founder and leader of the National Women’s Party (NWP) and is credited with the drafting of the Equal Rights Amendment, as described in the “American National Biography.”

Coming from a Quaker heritage and stepping well beyond the typical education of a woman in her day and age, Paul not only attended Swarthmore College, but also went on to study at the University of Pennsylvania and Washington College of Law and American University.

She graduated in 1905 from Swarthmore, majoring, unlike most women of her time, in biology.
As a Swarthmore student, Paul was involved in a variety of activities, including being a member of the hockey team, the class basketball team, the athletic council, the executive board of student government, the Joseph Leida Scientific Society and Ivy Poetess and Commencement Speaker, as the 1906 “Halcyon,” Swarthmore yearbook, records show.

However, it was not until Paul went abroad to England that she grew heavily involved in the suffragist movement, campaigning with the Women’s Social and Political Union.

Paul’s experiences in England were so defining to her suffragist personality that the “American National Biography” credits it as “an experience that redirected her life’s work and shaped the history of American feminism.”

Upon returning to the United States, Paul continued engaging in such movements, embracing the more militant side of English suffragist fights — something that was not as popular in the United States.

Paul also went on to also gain degrees in law that would become very beneficial in her fight for women’s rights: writing her dissertation at UPenn on the legal rights of women in Pennsylvania.
Once she returned to the US, Paul took part in and led a variety of women’s suffrage groups including the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and ultimately founding NWP.

Especially known for her aggressive, militant take on the fight for women’s rights, rather than the typical lady-like expectations, Paul was of the suffragists who were repeatedly imprisoned for “disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace,” according to the “American National Biography.”

While in prison, Paul would often go on hunger strikes and have to endure force feeding — an action which required forcing a tube down the subject’s, in this case Paul’s, nose or mouth into the stomach and feeding them through the tube.

She also led a march of 5,000 in D.C. at the same time of the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson, and, with NWP, led the first group to ever picket in front of the White House in order to force Wilson to support the suffrage amendment. As a result of the latter, and true to her character, Paul was arrested shortly after.

Paul was so dedicated to her cause, in fact, that after one of her psychiatric evaluations she was compared to Joan of Arc — someone so dedicated to her cause that she was willing to die for it.
An article in Everybody’s Magazine published in 1916 entitled “A new leader – Alice Paul – why she is” it reads that, “There is no Alice Paul. There is suffrage. She leads by being — not by being for — by being — her cause.”

The “Swarthmore College Bulletin” shows attempts of recognizing Paul on campus when students named a women’s center after her in the mid-seventies.

However, that soon faded by the mid-nineties when many students showed apprehension toward the women’s center being associated with Paul, as Paul was also known to share sentiments of racism and antisemitism.

In 2005, at long last, a dorm on campus was named after Alice Paul at the request of one of the donors.

Paul passed away in 1977 in the Moorestown Quaker Nursing Home. Now, the Alice Paul Institute works to preserve the legacy of Alice Paul, based out of Paul’s birthplace in Mount Laurel, New Jersey.

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