How many times was alice paul arrested

Alice Paul was a Quaker suffragist who fought to secure women the right to vote and other feminist causes. The author of the Equal Rights Amendment, written in 1923 but still not ratified, died at the age of 92 in 1977, and remains one of the nation’s most outspoken voices in the battle for equality. “There will never be a new world order until women are a part of it,” she once said. 

Early Life and Education

Paul was born to suffragist Tacie Parry and successful Quaker businessman William Paul on January 11, 1885, in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. The oldest of four siblings, she lived with her family on a 265-acre farm, and as Hicksite Quakers, was raised to value living simply along with a high importance placed on gender equality and advocacy. In fact, as a girl, she attended suffragist meetings with her mother.

“When the Quakers were founded…one of their principles was and is equality of the sexes,” Paul said. “So I never had any other idea…the principle was always there.”

Paul, who graduated first in her class in 1901 from a Quaker school, attended the Quaker Swarthmore College, co-founded by her grandfather, Judge William Parry, graduating in 1905 with a biology degree. She then moved to New York, and, in 1907, earned a master’s degree in sociology from the New York School of Philanthropy (today’s Columbia University).

Paul soon moved to England, where she studied social work and joined the British suffrage movement where she learned militant protest strategies, including breaking windows, hunger strikes, forming picket lines and other tactics and forms of civil disobedience. There, she was arrested on seven occasions and jailed three times. While imprisoned, she carried out hunger strikes and was painfully force-fed for weeks through a nasal tube.

Fighting for Suffrage

Returning to the states in late 1909, she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1912 with a Ph.D. in economics, and in 1922,

American suffragist, feminist, and activist (1885–1977)

Alice Stokes Paul (January 11, 1885 – July 9, 1977) was an American Quaker, suffragette, suffragist, feminist, and women's rights activist, and one of the foremost leaders and strategists of the campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits sex discrimination in the right to vote. Paul initiated, and along with Lucy Burns and others, strategized events such as the Woman Suffrage Procession and the Silent Sentinels, which were part of the successful campaign that resulted in the amendment's passage in August 1920.

Paul often suffered police brutality and other physical abuse for her activism, always responding with nonviolence and courage. She was jailed under terrible conditions in 1917 for participating in a Silent Sentinels protest in front of the White House, as she had been several times during earlier efforts to secure the vote for women in the United Kingdom.

After 1920, Paul spent a half-century as leader of the National Woman's Party, which fought for the Equal Rights Amendment, written by Paul and Crystal Eastman, to secure constitutional equality for women. She won a major permanent success with the inclusion of women as a group protected against discrimination by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Early life and education

Alice Stokes Paul was born on Janu

Alice Paul was a political activist who played a key role in the suffragist movements, both in the UK and in the US. Following on from our popular women’s suffrage timeline, we’ve created an Alice Paul life timeline and explored all the amazing work she did for gender equality.

Alice Paul in front of the National Women’s Party (NWP) flag

Image: Picryl

Childhood and Education

Alice Paul was born on 11th January 1885 in New Jersey, USA. She grew up in a Quaker household, being a descendant of William Penn who was the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania. During her childhood, she frequently attended suffragist meetings with her mother, who was a member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).

Paul attended Swarthmore College and during her time there, she was a member of the Executive Board of Student Government, which may have been the start of her passion for political activism. Paul went on to graduate in 1905 with a Bachelor’s degree in Biology.

After doing some settlement work in New York City, she graduated with a Master of Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1907. During her Master’s, she studied a mixture of political science, sociology and economics, learning a great deal that would later aid her work as a Suffragette.

Paul then moved to England and continued pursuing post-graduate studies from the University of Birmingham, which is where she first heard Christabel Pankhurst speak, leader of the Women’s Social Political Union (WSPU). She later moved to London to continue her studies in sociology and economics at the London School of Economics, which is where she joined the WSPU.

Paul also later received her law degree (LLB) in 1922, her Master of Laws degree in 1927 and a doctorate in civil law from the Washington College of Law at American University.

Alice Paul in academic robes

Image: Library of Congress

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Timeline of Alice Paul

1900s

In 1907

Alice Paul was one of the most prominent activists of the 20th-century women's rights movement. An outspoken suffragist and feminist, she tirelessly led the charge for women's suffrage and equal rights in the United States. Born to a New Jersey Quaker family in 1885, young Alice grew up attending suffragist meetings with her mother.[1] She pursued an unusually high level of education for a woman of her time, graduating Swarthmore College in 1905. She also received her master's in sociology in 1907, a PhD in economics in 1912 from the University of Pennsylvania, and a law degree (LLB) from the Washington College of Law at American University in 1922.

While continuing her studies in England, she made the acquaintance of militant British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters, Christabel and Sylvia. Pankhurst’s group used disruptive and radical tactics including smashing windows and prison hunger strikes. Police arrested and imprisoned Paul many times for her involvement with the group. Forever changed by her experiences, Paul returned to the United States in 1910 and turned her attention to the American suffrage movement. After the deaths of Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1902 and Susan B. Anthony in 1906, the suffrage movement was languishing, lacking focus under conservative suffrage organizations that concentrated only on achieving state suffrage. Paul believed that the movement needed to focus on the passage of a federal suffrage amendment to the US Constitution.

When she first returned to the United States, Alice Paul attempted to work with the main US suffrage organization, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). They appointed her chair of the NAWSA Congressional Committee in 1912. Almost immediately, she began organizing a Woman Suffrage Procession planned for Washington, DC, on March 3, 1913 -- the day before President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration. The carefully planned parade turned into a near riot when spectators began assaultin