By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
Susan B. Anthony — she of the $1 dollar coin — and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are both well-known figures in the arena of women’s rights and the push to grant women the right to vote.
But it was the lesser known Alice Paul who took up the charge in the early 1900s and eventually gained that right for women, through the adoption of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
And what is even less well-known is that Ms. Paul was behind the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was introduced in 1923. It has been ratified by 35 states, which is three short of the necessary 38 states for it to become a Constitutional amendment.
”It was a ‘Rocky’ story, or a ‘David v. Goliath’ story. It was Alice Paul against the President of the United States and Congress (in her quest to gain the right for women to vote),” writer and former journalist Mary Walton said last week.
The author of “A Woman’s Crusade: Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot,” Ms. Walton, an Ocean Grove resident, spoke to more than a dozen women — and one man — at the March 17 program at the Lawrence Branch of the Mercer County Library System. It was co-sponsored by the Friends of the Lawrence Library and the Lawrence League of Women Voters.
Ms. Paul, who grew up on a farm in southern New Jersey, was 29 years old and an unlikely leader of the militant wing of the National Woman’s Party, she said. The group’s sole aim was to gain the right to vote for women.
Ms. Paul grew up in a Quaker family, headed by her father, who was a banker. Quakers believe in equality, and “if you believe everyone is equal, you do not believe in authority,” Ms. Walton said. Quakers also are opposed to violence, favoring non-violent resistance, she said.
The future women’s rights leader attended Quaker schools and graduated from Swarthmore College, Ms. Walton said. She took up social work and moved to New York City, but decided it was ineffectual in making changes. She came home and earned graduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania.
Ms. Paul spent some time in England, where she was introduced to women’s rights issues. Women could not get a hearing before Parliament, Ms. Walton said. They were not allowed to speak at political meetings. Nevertheless, Ms. Paul — who disliked public speaking — was set to make a speech when she was arrested by the English authorities. She was jailed several times in England.
After a year spent in England, Ms. Paul returned to the United States. She resumed her academic studies and became a “high-powered academic,” Ms. Walton said. But in the summer of 1911, she led Philadephia’s first street-corner campaign for women’s right to vote.
By 1910, five states — all located in the western part of the country — had granted women the right to vote, Ms. Walton said. But Ms. Paul had a different idea. She sought an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would grant women the right to vote.
Taking a cue from the English women’s rights movement, she formed the Congressional Union — which eventually became the National Woman’s Party. Ms. Paul’s approach was more militant, Ms. Walton said. She organized a woman’s suffrage parade and held it the day before President Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated for a second term in 1917.
A permit was needed for the parade, but the Washington, D.C. chief of police refused to issue a permit, Ms. Walton said. The parade, which was attended by thousands of women, took place. And just as the police chief had predicted, men poured out of the bars and spat at the women and tried to block the parade route on Pennsylvania Avenue, she said.
Southern politicians, in particular, did not want to grant women the right to vote. They had already given black men the right to vote, and they did not want to extend that right to black women, she said. The women were not discouraged, and began to protest in front of the White House.
”Standing outside the White House gates, the women — who became known as the ‘silent sentinels’ — were hard to ignore,” Ms. Walton said. “They were well dressed and well bred. They came from the best women’s colleges. They were professionals. They did not chant or talk. They just held up signs.”
The women were attacked, Ms. Walton said. But instead of jailing their attackers, the authorities jailed the women for obstructing traffic because they were standing on the sidewalk. Ms. Paul was among those arrested.
When she demanded to be treated as a political prisoner, that request was denied, Ms. Walton said. She came up with another tactic — a hunger strike. But prison officials force-fed Ms. Paul and other jailed demonstrators through a tube forced down the nose. They were thrown into dirty prison cells and fed wormy oatmeal and soup.
Word of the ill-treatment of the women prisoners leaked out, Ms. Walton said. As pressure mounted on President Wilson, he was forced to change his mind. England and Canada granted women the right to vote, and several states had ratified the proposed 19th Amendment, she said.
By the summer of 1920, the amendment was ratified by 35 states — one short of the 36 needed for it to become law, Ms. Walton said. Tennessee was on the verge of ratifying it, but there was a tie vote in the Tennessee House of Representatives. That tie vote was broken by legislator Harry Burns, who was initially opposed to the amendment, but who voted in favor of it.
”He voted (to ratify the 19th Amendment) because his mother had always told him to do the right thing, and a boy should always listen to what his mother says,” Ms. Walton said. He was 24 years old.
Even with the 19th Amendment safely ratified in 1920, Ms. Paul did not rest. There were still many laws on the books that impeded the equality of women, Ms. Walton said. That’s why Ms. Paul wrote the Equal Rights Amendment, which was introduced at Seneca Falls, N.Y. — the same place where the push for a woman’s right to vote began.
Adoption of the 19th Amendment was Ms. Paul’s “crowning achievement,” Ms. Walton said. She lived to see the Equal Rights Amendment pass the U.S. Congress in 1972. She died in 1974, thinking that it would be ratified by the states.
”Mahatma Gandhi said, ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you and then you win.’ That, my friends, is the story of Alice Paul and the battle for the ballot,” Ms. Walton said.

