Go Ask Alice (HoF thread)

https://www.nwhm.org/education-resources/biography/biographies/alice-paul/


As her first large-scale push for the public’s support of women’s right to vote, Paul organized the largest parade that had ever occurred in Washington, D.C. On March 3, 1913, the day before President-elect Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, around eight thousand woman marched with banners and floats down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House. Around half a million people watched the parade, although some were there to verbally harass the marchers. In addition to reducing the number of people who greeted Wilson when he arrived by train that day, the parade created a great deal of publicity for the women’s movement. On March 17, Paul and other suffragists met with President Wilson about their cause but he said it was not yet time for an amendment to the Constitution. They met with him twice more that month without making progress. On April 7, the opening day of Congress, Paul organized a demonstration and later that month founded the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage to focus specifically on lobbying Congress.

Trying a new tactic, Paul and other women became the first to picket the White House. Starting in January 1917, they spent eighteen months picketing. Over 1,000 “Silent Sentinels” slowly marched, day and night, in front of the White House gates, displaying suffrage banners with messages such as, “Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?" They endured the verbal and physical attacks of spectators which only increased after the United States entered World War I and the women’s signs became more accusatory, asking President Wilson how he could send American men to die in a war for democracy when he denied women the right to vote at home. Instead of protecting the women, the police began arresting them for obstructing traffic. As the women continued picketing, their jail sentences grew longer. Paul was sentence to jail for seven months. In jail, she organized a hunger strike to protest their incarceration. Doctors threatened to send Paul to an insane asylum, but she continued to refuse to eat and so they force fed her. Newspapers printed stories about the women’s treatment in jail, garnering public sympathy and support for the cause. By 1918, President Wilson publicly announced his support for suffrage. It took two more years for the Senate, House, and the required 36 states to approve the amendment.