LIBRARY CATALOG
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The Library Committee
INFORMATION ABOUT ALICE PAUL
Brief Biography
Alice Paul (January 11, 1885 – July 9, 1977) was born at the family farm Paulsdale, in Mt. Laurel township. She was born into an established Quaker family and an active community of Friends. Her family were members of Moorestown Monthly Meeting as was Alice and she attended and graduated from Friends High School in 1901. She identified as a member of the Religious Society of Friends for her entire life, but she did not attend Meeting as an adult. She attended Swarthmore College and ultimately received degrees from the University of Pennsylvania (MA), American University Law School (MA and PhD). She also attended courses at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Center, Birmingham University, and the London School of Economics. In fact, for most of her life she was convinced that she had more to learn. “Then I decided that I didn’t know very much. I was thoroughly convinced of that [laughter]. I had learned enough to know that I didn’t know anything…”[i] A sentiment she will repeat several times over the course of her life.
Ms. Paul originally seemed drawn to the Settlement Movement that was popular with progressives at this time. Begun in 1884 in London, it spread to the United States in the late 19th century. Settlement houses provided services to immigrants and the urban poor, including education, healthcare, physical activities, crafts, and employment.[ii] Alice Paul worked at Settlement Houses in New York City, after graduating from Swarthmore (1906), in Birmingham England while she attended Woodbooke, and in London after her course at Woodbrooke was completed (1908).
However, during her residence at Woodbrooke, she heard Cristobel Pankhurst speak at the University of Birmingham. As Alice described it in her later interview with Amelia Fry: When I had gone to the suffrage meetings in this country [USA] there was no oppositions …, everybody was in accord, all the Quakers were in accord. [In England, she saw the opposition]… “That’s one group now I want to throw in all the strength I can give to help.” [iii]
From this beginning grew her increasingly radical, nonviolent commitment to women’s suffrage and later equal rights for women. She returned home to the United States having been trained in the methods of the British movement and gained experience in direct protest and being arrested. On her return in 1909, she finished her PhD. And then turned her attention to the women’s suffrage movement. She soon became disillusioned with the state by state gradualist approach of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), preferring a constitutional amendment and direct action on a national level. Soon after the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession, Alice Paul, Lucy Burns and several other women left the NAWSA to form what would in 1917 become the National Womans Party . It was this group that organized the Silent Sentinels and the continuing pressure on President Wilson and Congress, despite WW1. Thanks to the sacrifices and hard work of the NWP and the NAWSA, the 19th Amendment passed both Houses of Congress in May/June 1918 and in August, 1919, after Tennessee ratified it, ¾ of the states had ratified and it became law.
Alice Paul, however, did not rest from her efforts to make women’s rights the law of the land. She wrote the original Equal Rights Amendment, which was sent to Congress in 1923. In 1938, she helped found the World Womans Party which worked for women’s rights internationally. In 1945, she was instrumental in incorporating women’s equality in the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), and in establishing a permanent UN Commission on the Status of Women. In the 1960s, she also played a role in getting sex included in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
She never fully retired from her activism and died in 1977 in Moorestown, while living at the former Greenleaf Home, and is buried in Westfield Meeting Cemetery.
In our Library
There are several books about Alice Paul in our library collection
Alice Paul : claiming power by Jill Diane Zahniser
A Woman’s Crusade: Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot by Mary Walton
Fight of the Century: Alice Paul Battles Woodrow Wilson for the Vote by Barb Rosenstock
From Equal Suffrage to Equal Rights: Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party,
New Jersey Women’s Heritage Trail
Iron Jawed Angels (VHS)
External Links
There is a wide variety of information both secondary and primary concerning Alice Paul and Womans Suffrage available on the internet. Unfortunately, the MFS Alice Paul Collection is not digitized. Included here are only a few of the one’s I have found most informative.
Both the Library of Congress and the National Park Service have multiple sources both primary and secondary.
The Alice Paul Center for Gender Justice is an excellent starting place.
The National Park Service has an excellent article on the 1913 Suffrage Procession.
This article about the Silent Sentinels is informative and has useful links. It is from the NPS.
A full searchable (command f) transcript of Amelia Fry’s Interviews is also available.
While not as easy to search as one might wish, many of Alice Paul’s papers are collected and digitized at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.
Images of Alice Paul and the Suffrage Movement are widely available at the above locations or using a simple search.
[i] Amelia Fry, “Interview with Alice Paul,” page 21. (https://oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt6f59n89c&doc.view=entire_text)
[ii] Google AI Summary, response to “Settlement House Movement,” January 22, 2025.
[iii] Amelia Fry, “Interview,” page 33.