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Played by Hilary Swank
ALICE PAUL (1885-1977)
"There will never be a new world order until women are a part of it." --Alice Paul
A brilliant organizer and activist, Alice Paul believed that women would never be given the vote; they had to demand it. Born to a Quaker family in New Jersey, she graduated from Swarthmore College and earned a social-work degree in New York. In 1907, she traveled to England, where she worked closely with the militant British suffragists Emmeline, Christobel and Sylvia Pankhurst. Arrested several times in London, Paul went on hunger strikes, was force-fed and learned the value of nonviolent civil disobedience to garner publicity for her cause. Back in the U.S., she joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1910 and was allowed to run their campaign in
Washington, D.C. As of 1916, 4 million women in 12 states had the right to vote;
Paul wanted these women to "hold the party in power responsible" by voting against Democrat Woodrow Wilson in the election of 1916. This strategy brought Paul into intense conflict with NAWSA President Carrie Chapman Catt, who supported Wilson.
In 1916, Paul founded the National Woman's Party, a radical new suffrage group devoted to winning a universal suffrage amendment to the Constitution instead of working state by state. With the U.S. on the verge of entering World War I in 1917, Paul set up a picket line at the White House -- the first in U.S. history -- with signs that said 20 Million American Women Are Not Self-Governed. Arrested on the trumped-up charge of "obstructing traffic," Paul was sent to the Occoquan Workhouse, where she demanded to be treated as a political prisoner arrested for her beliefs, not for committing a crime. When news of Paul's brutal force-feeding during a 22-day hunger strike reached the public, the White House bowed to public pressure, and she was released. Instrumental in bringing about ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, Paul later went to law school and wrote the first version of the Equal Rights Amendment, presented to Congress in 1923. She lobbied for women's rights until her death in 1977.
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