ALICE PAUL 1920 suffrage activist is back in the spotlight

She has become the focus of books and a movie 27 years after her death.
By GEOFF MULVIHILL
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. -- She stood with other suffragists at the gates to the White House, holding signs that asked President Wilson, "How long must women wait for liberty?"
She was thrown in jail, went on a hunger strike and endured having a tube forced down her throat so she could be fed. Now, more than 80 years after Alice Paul helped American women win the right to vote, she has become the focus of books and a movie.
Paul is a key figure in Eleanor Clift's best seller, "Founding Sisters and the 19th Amendment" and the subject of a forthcoming children's biography. Another writer is working on what could be the first full-length biography of Paul. The suffragist's story also is told in the movie "Iron Jawed Angels," starring Academy Award winner Hilary Swank.
The persistent Paul was a heroine in two epic tales: One she won, the other she lost.
In the last decade of a battle that began formally in 1848 -- 37 years before she was born -- Paul helped win women's voting rights in the United States. After that 1920 victory, she spent her last 56 years trying to get the nation to adopt another amendment, this one guaranteeing legal equality for women. The Equal Rights Amendment has yet to pass.
"I think she's an unsung hero of the movement," John Seigenthaler, author of the biography "James K. Polk: 1845-1849," said. "She's about to be sung." Seigenthaler is working on what could be the first full-length Paul biography.
History
Paul was serious and single-minded. She was the well-educated daughter of a prominent Quaker family in southern New Jersey when she went to England in 1907. There, she learned the subversive political tactics that would change the women's movement in her own country.
And it was there where she was arrested and force fed for the first time -- experiences she'd have again for her protests at home.
When she returned to the United States, Paul began to organize protests, showing up at the president's inauguration and picketing the White House.
It was that period of her life -- the decade ending with the passing of the 19th amendment -- that is portrayed in Clift's 2003 book, "Founding Sisters," and the film "Iron Jawed Angels."
Dramatic story
That story is dramatic. Paul organized protests, found herself jailed, lobbied the president and won.
While some of the other leading suffragists retreated to more conventional lives, Paul moved immediately to work on the ERA. She wrote the equal rights amendment in 1921, cheered it on and lobbied for it as it was introduced in Congress every session from 1923 until it was finally passed in 1972. It was adopted with a provision that three-fourths of the states -- 38 -- had to ratify it within seven years, a period that was later extended by three years.
But no state has ratified the ERA since Paul died at 92 in 1977.
Elizabeth Raum's editor at the Heinemann Library asked the children's books author to write a 32-page biography for second to fourth graders a few years ago for a series of books on activist women. Raum had never heard of Paul when she got the assignment but by the time she finished writing the book, which is due out May 1, Paul was one of her favorite subjects.
"She's the kind of person I would have enjoyed meeting," Raum said. "Five minutes after meeting her, I would have been doing work for the cause."
That wasn't unusual. Academics and some journalists who sought to interview Paul sometimes had to call a member of congress before she'd give them any time.
Paul founded the National Women's Party and was known for her persuasive powers. But she was not the public face of the her campaigns and was not a primary public speaker. And even though a 78-cent stamp issued in 1995 bears Paul's picture, she's not widely known.
XOn the Net: Alice Paul Institute: http://www.alicepaul.org