Thank you, Chase Livingston
for showing us your magnificent banner
held by The Silent Sentinels.
Thank you, Virginia Blaisdell
for sharing your exquisite photo
Miss Alice Paul ~ taken June, 1976
A Dozen Do’s and Don’ts from Alice Paul
IN HER QUAKER DESIRE to “let her life speak,” Alice Paul left no how-to manuals for political action.
But some of her strategy is implied from her correspondence, the oral histories, and her decisions.
As compiled by her primary biographer, Amelia Roberts Fry
1. DO NOT BE AFRAID OF CONTROVERSY. IT IS APATHY THAT KILLS MOST MOVEMENTS.
Paul’s formula: endurance to keep the level of momentum high until victory. Publicize demands on the opposition incessantly, aim your outreach to educate people in different sectors, and organize public events in rapid, continuing succession, each with a fresh new emphasis.
2. HAVE ONLY ONE GOAL FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION.
Have unanimous consensus from officers and make the statement of a goal the sole requirement for membership. This wards off the frequent problem of organizations dividing into factions and splitting off members. For other goals, Alice Paul urged members to join those relevant societies also — in today’s language, networking.
3. DO NOT SPEND LARGE AMOUNTS OF BUDGET AND ENERGY TRYING TO BE A BIG ORGANIZATION. A SMALL ONE CAN MULTIPLY ITS INFLUENCE BY BRINGING TOGETHER THE TRULY INTERESTED FROM DIFFERENT SECTORS, WHO THEN CAN REACH OUT TO EDUCATE THEIR GROUPS TO YOUR OBJECTIVE.
By staying small, decisions can be made faster. By the time a decision is agreed upon in a large mass organization, often the political situation has changed.
4. SEEK THE “LITTLE PEOPLE,” THEN BUILD YOUR ACTIONS FROM EXISTING POWER SOURCES – -USING ANY STRINGS AVAILABLE.
Think well-placed relatives and friends of members? The states? A political party? Congress? The President? Allied groups? Paul believed in beginning membership efforts with persons of little “position or influence,” not the “big and important people.”
AN EXAMPLE: To a disheartened federal suffrage amendment organizer in Wyoming, where women had been enfranchised for nearly three decades, and where the “important people” of the women’s clubs seemed not to be interested, Paul wrote that those people “never are, you know. It is the same situation everywhere, I think. When we came to Washington, for instance, and opened headquarters here we were told everything . . . that no one would give any money; that no one was interested in suffrage because this was a Congressional and Diplomatic city with no industrial or commercial population; that parades, open-air speaking, or demonstrations of any kind, would alienate the few who were interested, and so on. But we paid no attention to the big and important people, and began on a large and rousing demonstration, appealing for help to the ordinary middle class person of no position or influence. Invariably they respond. I think this is the experience of people everywhere.” Paul suggested she begin with a house-to-house canvas.
(Paul to. Mrs. Gertrude Hunter, nwpp reel 13, fr 4, Oct 16, 1914.)
5. KNOW YOUR FACTS. HAVE AN ACTIVE RESEARCH ARM.
You need accurate data and previous models of what you are doing.
6. KEEP THE GOAL CONSTANTLY IN THE MEDIA. KEEP IT SIMPLE, AND BE CONSISTENT.
Even when Paul’s initiatives were audacious and spectacular, the drama of an event did not distract from the main message but kept it front and center: first it was enfranchising women, followed by equal rights for men and women, both by amending the federal constitution
7. EVEN WHEN YOU EXPECT THE OPPOSITION TO KNIFE YOUR OBJECTIVE, TRY ANYWAY. IT HELPS EXPOSE THE SOURCE OF OPPOSITION, KEEPS THE ISSUE BEFORE THE PUBLIC, AND EDUCATES OTHERS.
Never say “Of course we know it cannot pass this year.” You never really know what will happen in politics.
8. LOCATE THE CORE OPPOSITION, TARGET IT, AND HOLD IT PUBLICLY RESPONSIBLE FOR PASSAGE OR NON-PASSAGE.
AN EXAMPLE: Alice was one of the first organizers consistently to use a U.S. president as a prop for publicity and his opposition as a target. After her first few delegations to President Woodrow Wilson, her favorite uncle, Mickle Paul, questioned her wisdom, saying that she should instead be putting her energies into educating “the people,” who are the supreme power. Paul answered that she was educating them, and: “I quite agree with what thee says concerning the advisability of bringing pressure to bear upon the President in this matter . . . . The purpose of these delegations in going to President Wilson was to impress upon him, if possible, the earnestness of the demand back of this movement and also to give as much publicity as possible to our agitation. The main object, of course, was the publicity. “I am grateful for the interest and sympathy which prompted thee to write. Affectionately, /s/Alice Paul.
(Paul to Uncle Mickle, March 31, 1913, tr 1, bx 1, nwpp, Library of Congress)
9. NEVER PUBLICLY ATTACK ANOTHER GROUP IN THE MOVEMENT. NEVER ANSWER THEIR ATTACKS ON YOU.
It uses energy best spent on your goal. And it wastes publicity.
10. BALANCE RISKS AGAINST GAINS: ADD CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE ONLY WHEN PRESSURE POLITICS PROVES CONTINUOUSLY INEFFECTIVE.
Even when most women did not have the basic political power of the ballot, Paul resisted using her famous “militancy” during four years conventional pressure to move the amendment in Congress. In the ensuing decades of the Equal Rights Amendment, she believed that in a new campaign the first challenge is to educate and gather allies before mounting the crusade. Consider: Today a jaded American public reduces the shock-and-change results of “civil disobedience.” As for hunger striking, statistics show that with only a few exceptions, most hunger-strikers are now left to starve.
11. FINGER-POINT BUT DO NOT HUMILIATE YOUR OPPOSITION. EACH ACTION SHOULD BE AIMED WITH A WELL-DEFINED DEMAND AT A PRECISE TARGET.
Raise the level of guilt, yes. But humiliation can create a resistance to accepting your demand even when the desire to capitulate is there. An action should have one precise target the public can quickly understand-usually a concrete refusal or delay. Paul’s most successful use of militancy: Each time Wilson failed to tell his majority in Congress to move the bill, Paul ratcheted up the drama of her next action and pin-pointed his exact refusal for the press.
12. VIOLENCE IS COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE.
Paul’s nonviolent, passive resistance tactics built public outrage against those opposed to her cause. She saw how the British suffragettes’ slashing and burning replaced “votes for women” as the public issue. In the U.S. the mob attacks on the silent “ladies” (incarnating virtue), their imprisonments and force-feeding, forced the government to move the bill.
Gift From Robert P.J. Cooney, Jr. author of Winning the Vote & Remembering Inez
If you have something you would like to submit, please email it and you will hear from us.
Zoe@missalicepaul.com
Welcome to the world of Miss Alice Paul
I have spent a lifetime studying Miss Alice Paul. She has been my North Star in countless ways. To her feminism was a full-time vocation and nothing diminished her devotion. She lived within the etiquettes of Quakerism while applying the most radical ideas and groundbreaking public behavior. Under Alice’s direction, ladies wore their hats with boots buttoned while burning the speeches of the President at the White House fence. Her social propriety was always evident while creating a major revolution.
Years tick on and my interest in Miss Paul has expanded, my investigations deepened and my passion to share my understanding of her is overwhelming. One day Alice Paul will be recognized as the first American to use Nonviolent Direct Action, Civil Disobedience and political protest within a political movement and I hope I will be one of the instruments of that righteous occasion. As we see thousands of people at the White House fence, it was Alice Paul who set this lineage in motion; relentlessly confronting the President and Congress at their very door.
We need to acknowledge her. We need to insist that history honor her. We need her point of view. We need her inspiration. We need to see her as the radical lifelong committed activist that she was. It is my hope to lift her off the pages of academic and history books, scrape off the disturbing fiction slathered on her and offer you the Alice I know, love and hold as my dearest most inspiring political activist. She is human, flawed, funny and “pure feminist.” I hope you will join with me in lifting her to the rightful moniker of The American Feminist Gandhi and more.
My current deep dive into her life began in earnest December 2012 when Purdue University invited me give the keynote address at their Centennial March commemorating the Suffrage March of 1913. That unfolded into a program, “Miss Paul ~ The Heart of an Activist.” It featured the intersection of Miss Paul’s life and the extraordinary relevance to our lives as modern day activists. Each time I presented it, the content and relevance bloomed.
Sharing stories, activist lessons and insights about Alice Paul presents unexpected obstacles. When I began, I had no idea how many times her legacy was redacted, fictionalized, and trivialized. I spent hours and hours on phone calls with people who knew her and digging into newspapers. In fact, I even found her passport on Ancestry dot com. But the real treasure trove began as word got out that I was curious and respectful of the facts. People who knew her began contacting me. People sent me letters, photos and documents. I would get phone calls from grade school students to PhD candidates who had gotten my number from someone and somehow I would know what they were looking for.
Mostly interestingly, I saw Alice’s rigid, demanding, almost dark side and I knew that I truly loved her. No matter how calculating, no matter how seemingly cold, I loved her. It only begged the question, would she love me? I hope so as it would the best confirmation that I understand her. I think she would appreciate that my love for equality, my unrelenting mad passion for equality is something we share. It is something in which we found both loneliness and camaraderie. And I do love hats.
PRODUCTION NOTES
This is a dynamic environment. Additions happen often. Changes happen as information is collected. Edits are gratefully considered. The intention is to keep this robust, growing, and current. If you have something you would like to submit, please email it and you will hear from us.
PHOTO ALBUMS
You can see that the photo albums are not done. They will never be done. As information is obtained or new photos discovered, the albums will grow and the captions will filled in.
Chapter 4, The Congressional Millinery Establishment
… time and again, lobbyists would come back from the Capitol with the news of some unexpected maneuver which perplexed or even blocked them. Congressmen, themselves, would be puzzled over the situation. Again and again, she has seen Alice Paul walk to the window, stand there, head bent, thinking. Then, suddenly she would come back. She had seen behind the veil of conflicting and seemingly untranslatable testimony. She had, in Maud Younger's own words, cloven "straight to the heart of things." Often her lobbyists hail the experience of explaining to baffled members of Committees in Congress the concealed tactics of their own Committee.
Maud Younger
The Story of the Woman’s Party, Inez Haynes Gillmore
Google Miss Alice Paul today and you will find 164 million results. It is a very high number for a woman whom most only know as Hilary Swank, wearing a pink hat, enjoying prison and evaporating August 27, 1920. If you scan the first hundred references there is one description always in the lead; strategist. Lucy Burns was comfortable in public, loved parades and pageantry but it was Alice Paul whose mind never, ever rested.
As recently and notably, George Lakey in 2013 and Marty Langelan in 2014, Hazel Hunkins-Hallinan to Peg Edwards describing Alice’s mind at 91 (1976), all agreed. “I interviewed Alice Paul many years later and found in her the shrewd strategist who knows that polarization can close doors in the short run and open them for the longer run — it’s all in the timing” writes George Lakey.1
Where did this plotting mind come from? Was it the organized mind of a banker’s daughter or from sitting in silence at the Meeting House. Did she naturally organize all matters because of her study of biology and economics or was she so genuinely focused that all distractions were instantly discarded? She is often quoted as saying nothing else mattered before constitutional equality – nothing. It was a maddening insistence to some and a great relief to others. It was never simple and always calculated. Grandmaster Irina Krush would have no chance with Miss Paul. Not only was her strategy the long game but she never tipped her next move.
Alice simply knew the cause, the effect and the differential. All masterfully played. The worse things got, the more women showed up for her. And make no mistake, it was for her. As Miss Hazel Hunkins-Hallinan remarked, when you looked into her violet eyes, you could not say no. Followers trusted her for one reason – she knew the next move. She always knew the next move. In fact, sometimes she was on to the next move while everyone else was still finishing off the last. Her earned discipline, her own self-mastery was her core.
Looking up Pennsylvania Avenue, most see a domed building. Miss Paul saw the collective ground game for legislative success. She dissected and indexed the capitol. It became her chessboard. The goal was to invade and convert lawmakers to finally enfranchise women. Alice trained and unleashed her fashionable, ladylike crusaders in full force. The 64th Congress would be occupied by ladies heels constantly clicking on the white marble floors. The more the men resisted, the more ladies showed up. The private men’s smoker became compromised. From the gallery to the offices, there was a constant parade of hats under which ticked an unwelcome insistence for a voice, a vote, an office, full equality.
Who were these ladies? Their economic and educational diversity was pivotal to making the viewer pay attention. These were wives of the powerful men of Washington, socialites with furs, PhD’s and artists. These were students, waitresses, secretaries and housekeepers. These were daughters and grandmothers who were swept up in the thrill of stepping out. With assignments distributed, notes in hand, they took to persuade, convert and conquer the Senators and Representatives of the United States Congress. The “ladies” were activated.
Spent the entire day, rode elevators, walked the white marble halls even “discovered secret stairways.” One congressman said, "Women don't know anything about politics. Did you ever hear them talking together ? Well, first they talk about fashions, and children, and housework; and then, perhaps about churches; and then perhaps — about theatres; and then perhaps " he finally added, " Do you think I want my wife working against my interests ?
Revelations of a Woman Lobbyist, Maud Younger
Alice had seen the differential at work in London. Militants had the hearts of warriors, the tactics of soldiers but the fashion sense of Selfridges. They carried chalk in their handbags for public announcements and one, Mary Richardson, toted a small axe she used to slash the painting Venus at the London National Gallery. Alice herself knew the power of appearance. It stood in direct contrast to the violence of being attacked, banners ripped or being dragged down the street. She was a Quaker, a very reserved lady and the epitome of a tempest in a teapot.
In those days, Alice Paul herself was like one driven by a fury of speed. She was a human dynamo. She made everybody else work as hard as possible, but she drove — although she did drive — nobody so hard as herself. Winifred Mallon said, "I worked with Alice Paul for three months before I saw her with her hat off. I was perfectly astonished, I remember, at that mass of hair. I had never suspected its existence."
The Story of the Woman’s Party by Inez Haynes Gillmore
The women of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and her Congressional Committee dressed to attract, not repel. They were dressed as women of means and etiquette with their plans on index cards in their pocketbooks, held by gloved hands. They were respectable ladies, many of whom were married to the very legislators they were agitating. Widely brimmed, held by hatpins, Edwardian hats were uniform. These ladies were not the ones mocked in anti-suffrage cartoons wearing the pants in the family. They were shapely, refined and articulate on politics.
Many of these ladies had not lobbied before. Possibly they had not envisioned themselves walking up the hill to tangle with Congress at all. These were not the seasoned lobbyists representing labor and protection rights. To start the orientation, Alice Paul sent them sit in the gallery and watch the democratic process at work. Lucy Burns headed up the Congressional Union army of lobbyists who would insist that the US Constitution be amended to include women voters. Each was assigned a member of Congress. They read reports, took notes, followed legislation and knocked on every office door. They distributed questionnaires, flyers and filed all their findings back at the CU office. As one member of Congress remarked, the CU had turned the halls of Congress in to a “Millinery Establishment.”
Their assigned target was based on similarities; clubs, family members, religion; dozens of things ~ all detailed in the Congressional Voting Card index (CVC). Thousands of handwritten 5 X 8 index cards were organized and constantly updated on every member of Congress. Managed by Ann Martin in 1915 and carried on by Maud Younger in 1916, this extraordinary, detailed analog database was an unparalleled weapon for change. An astounding twenty-two senators were converted through the use of the CVC. “One Congressman on whom we started a campaign received so many letters and telegrams that he said:' If you will only stop I will vote for the amendment. It keeps my office force busy all day answering letters about Suffrage alone,'' recalls Maud Younger.
Oracle could boast of such a “relational database.”
- Name and brief biography
- Ancestry, Nativity, Education, Religion, Offices Held, General Information
- Birth, Date, Place, Number of Children, Additional Information
- Father Nativity, Education, Occupation
- Mother Nativity, Education, Occupation
- Brothers. Nativity, Education, Occupation
- Education: Preparatory School and College
- Religion: Name of Church, Date of Entrance, Position Held in Church, Church Work
- Military Service: Dates, Offices, Battles, Additional Information
- Occupation: Past, Present
- Labor Record
- Literary Work
- Lecture Work
- Newspapers what newspapers member reads and have the most influence over him
- Recreation
- Hobbies
- Health
- Habits
- Political Life Prior to Congress: Offices Held. Whether Supported Prohibition Amendment, Offices Run For
- Political life in Congress: Terms, Date, Party, Bills Introduced, Bills Supported, Committees
- Suffrage Record: Outside of Congress, In Congress
- Votes cast in Election of Member
In addition to these data fields, there were dates of the interview, the name of the interviewer and personal notations by the lobbyists. They also tracked all signatures, letters and sent holiday cards, including birthdays.2
It is important to know all about the mother, and that explains why a whole card is devoted to her. Mothers continue to have strong influence over their sons. Some married men listen to their mother more than to their wives. You will hear a man telling his wife how his mother used to do it, and then we know from his frequent reference to his mother that if we can make of her a strong advocate for suffrage we have the best of chances of winning the son, or if it is the wife who has the strong influence and she is an anti. We know that our first work must be to convert the wife to our cause.
New York Times, March 2, 1919.
In true Alice Paul style; frugal and forthright, she publicly presented a full report on the “Cost of Suffrage.”
Regarding the CVC;
The National Woman’s Party has a card index which contains a record of each individual Senator and Representative. This index and the maintenance of the “legislative department of the party” cost $12,639.37 involving, as it did, a large corps of lobbyists to interview members of the Senate and House not only once but repeatedly. This involved considerable traveling and a large office for cataloging the cards. The results of the interviews of the militant organizers with the politicians and every obtainable printed report indicating the suffrage views, were cataloged in these files for use in the fight to compel the passage of the resolution, which submitted the suffrage amendment to the state legislatures for ratification.
(Total cost to the NWP for the ratification of the 19th Amendment, $664,208.42)
New York Times, November 29, 1920.
The legacy of hats waxed and waned, as does the American Women’s Movement. They surfaced again in the House terms of Representative Bella Abzug, (D. NY).
Ms. Abzug traced the wearing of her trademark wide-brimmed hats. She recalled: ''When I was a young lawyer, I would go to people's offices and they would always say: ‘Sit here. We'll wait for the lawyer.' Working women wore hats. It was the only way they would take you seriously. After a while, I started liking them. When I got to Congress, they made a big thing of it. So I was watching. Did they want me to wear it or not? They didn't want me to wear it, so I did.”
New York Times, April 1, 1998.
So renown, today there is even a Facebook page dedicated to Bella Abzug’s hats.3
In October 21, 2014 the Veteran Feminists of America presented Gloria Steinem with one of Rep. Abzug’s hats at a gala luncheon at the New York Harvard Club.4
No mistaking the brilliant commanding strategist of the militant branch of the American Suffrage Movement was quiet, brave, percolating Alice Paul. It sounds so simple but the depth of her understanding cannot be overstated. She, herself, navigating the differential moved from a childhood home of equality and ease to carrying the banner of women worldwide to end second class citizenship, any classism in regards to citizenship in fact. She never stopped, be it while serving in an organization or utterly alone.
It is almost as if Alice hovered miles above to have this long vision; the procession, the halls of Congress, the Sentinels at the fence, the vote, were all calculated moves on the road to full constitutional equality. It was never for her mother, daughters (she never had), her friends, herself. It was for the constitution itself, as without equality, it was flawed beyond application. Without equality, no one was a full citizen. She never took her hat off as the job was and is not done.
1. Should We Bother Trying to Change our Opponents’ Hearts? George Lakey. Waging Nonviolence June 4, 2013
2. Sewall-Belmont House & Museum CVC
4. Veteran Feminists of America
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Activists Archive
I have spent a lifetime collecting information, quotations and photos of inspiring activism. This archive stores some of my favorites.
The big question, of course, is why do some shut down and move away in the face of power and oppression and others move into action? I think if we could solve this riddle, we would unlock millions of sleeping activists who could possibly help save this world and transform suffering. ……
I have pretty much lost faith in governments or world leaders or patriarchal institutions to reverse the sad and terryfying trajectory of human begins. My hope, my life, lies with activists. I think of the Occupy Wall Street movemental activists in the rain forest, domestic workers’ unions, Pussy Riot, LBGT workers, V-Day activists, antiviolence and antiwar activists, antiracists, fair trade, hunger, animal rights activists. The list is fortunately endless, and these activists are born every minute and are rising everywhere to reenvision and give birth to the new world. They are obsessed, unstoppable, passionate, creative in finding ways over and around obstacles. They are community builders, often humorous, sometimes and necessarily belligerent, insomniacs, usually dancers, celebrators of life.
Eve Ensler preface to My Name is Jody Williams
Chapter 1 Prophetic Encounters, The Lineage of Equality Activism
When human beings encounter one another deeply,
in the midst of their struggles for freedom and equality and community,
prophetic power is unleashed.
Dan McKanan
Can you feel the heat when you picture Gandhi talking with Margaret Sanger? Can you imagine the intensity when Thich Nhat Hanh sat with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? Stanton finds Anthony, Huerta and Chavez find Alinsky. How did Dorothy Day end up in a jail cell with Alice Paul? Could such provenance be by chance? Author Dan McKanan1 says a loud and studied no.
Beyond the wonder of such luminaries sharing space, challenging long-held beliefs or resting in rarely matched passion, McKanan proposes that something actually occurs when radicals converge. Is it an opening, an explosion, a remembering or a passing of a baton? Some would say it was destiny, maybe even prearranged. In fact most inhabitants of the earth, believing in reincarnation, would be comfortable thinking it was unavoidable. To me, both experientially and through historic discovery, access to the powers of radical activism happen at the point of genuine inquiry fueled by what has been stored within the heart, possibly for lifetimes.
As Mary Daly asserts, god is a verb and Emmeline Pankhurst states, deeds not words; there is a profound instant recognition that change-makers solicit, elicit, long for and celebrate. Could it be a tribal collected release or a divine spark awaiting ignition? It is impossible to measure and impossible to deny. The appearance of a relay demonstrates that activists, clearly radical activists, share a certain woof and warp. Frederick Douglass put it thus, it was only through his encounters with other radicals that he could get any, “glimpse of God anywhere.”
To know someone, you have to be willing to look at the trivial, the bad, the breadth and length of their reach, the peaks and their reaction to it all. Who loved them and who hated them is only half an understanding if it doesn’t lead to ask and answer why. To pass McKanan’s test of Prophetic Encounters with radical activists, Alice Paul exceeds anyone whose life is knowable. Her soul was ignited again and again. It was a dazzling and daunting path her falling foot created.
Certainly Miss Paul’s Quakerism set her stage from her very first breath. It was more than posture and buttoned boots. It was a refined and abiding regard for silence, for listening, for a seated community who respects the individual and assembled voice. From her family and home she saw equality as unquestioned. It was not unusual, it was threaded throughout. Her great aunt was a minister. Her mother attended college and it was expected Alice would too. The very notion of inequality with all its consequences was not in her early line of vision. Her family followed Elias Hicks, founder of Hicksite Quakerism. Another radical in his own right.
This young lady packed up her seemingly predictable life, privileged life, tennis racket and all, to begin college at Swarthmore. Her major was biology with the expectation that she would teach. All was game. set. match. until her senior year, when Alice met the new, thirty-year old professor who just completed his dissertation on the effects of poverty on women’s choices; Robert Clarkson Brooks. This Cornell graduate held seminar-style classes on the relationship of gender and class. Senior Alice Paul was examining the intersection of economics, politics and gender for the very first time. She was fully engaged and Professor Brooks took notice. He suggested that biology may not be her calling and to investigate social work.
Upon her graduation, Robert Brooks nominated Alice for a scholarship with the College Settlement Association (CSA). She was given several cities to pick from and chose New York. In 1905, she left her quiet religious home to live at College Settlement House, 95 Rivington Street, NYC and attend classes at the New York School of Philanthropy.
The young adults living there, most in their first paid job, were serving a neighborhood of extremely poor immigrants, many of whom were Russian Jews. Out in the streets was a mass of humanity constantly on the move. Somewhere in the center was the College Settlement House with lovely rooms, servants, privacy and safety. Alice had a room on the third floor room with a big window. Many times her college girlfriends visited, spending the night. These brand-new caseworkers were learning directly from the pioneers of social reform, participating with the birth of applied social work. It was there that Alice first met trade union women and learned about protection laws.
Alice also attended classes at the New York School of Philanthropy, a start-up which eventually became Columbia University’s School of Social Work. There she met women who would be at her side for years to come, Lavinia Dock, Jane Addams, and Florence Kelly who eventually opposed her. She was a renown overachiever, serious student, even head of the sewing club. Importantly she learned life was more than tennis, bowling, friends and socials. Alice found purpose: politics, economics and social reform. Alice was a fledgling social worker. After a year of intense demanding work she came to a conclusion which informed her entire life,
I could see that social workers were not doing much good in the world…
you knew you could not change the situation by social work.
Carrying forward that original spark from the Prophetic Encounter with Robert Clarkson Brooks, Alice left social work to study sociology, political science and economics at the University of Pennsylvania. Her Master’s Thesis was “Towards Equality.” She was nominated for a fellowship at the Quaker School in Woodbrooke, England. There her days were filled with silent prayer, lectures and games all under a Quaker rubric, Alice fed her driven curiosity with classes at the University of Birmingham where her next Prophetic Encounter awaited her.
Suffrage was on the march in Britain. From department store windows to table china, women voting was conversation across the Kingdom. The call for suffrage in the U.S. was polite and patient, serving tea and writing notecards to their legislators, epitomizing the term, lady-like. Nothing had happened there in close to sixty years but across the ocean, the Pankhurst family of London was heating things up. Fashionable ladies were speaking on streets, marching in unison, singing songs in public and collecting more attention than ever before. They were breaking convention, breaking windows, breaking the law and thereby arrested, jailed and force-fed to keep their fasting bodies alive.
Twenty-two year old Alice Paul was more than interested to hear this celebrated suffragette, twenty-seven year old, Christabel Pankhurst speak at Birmingham University December, 1907. When Christabel rose with much to say, Alice witnessed a life-changing moment. The crowd relentlessly jeered, booed, ridiculed and shouted down Christabel with such contempt, the entire event could not continue. For the American Quaker Alice Paul, this was an unthinkable travesty. It was unlike anything she had ever seen or heard. A young lovely, well-dressed woman with a message of self-worth and justice was being swallowed up in a torrent of mad vulgar yelling rudeness that was so inescapable, the event ended with Christabel unheard.
That night Alice wrote in her daily notes that she was shocked and disgusted. It turned out to be Alice’s defining moment. The fire was lit. This Prophetic Encounter, which was just beginning, was her road to Damascus, her Satori, her Enlightenment. Alice’s soul was revealed to herself, potential awakened. Drafted into a lifelong and, mostly, solitary leadership, Alice Paul was converted, “heart and soul.”
Christabel’s speech was rescheduled and fully heard. Alice was forced to reorganize her life’s priorities. It was a long way from tennis and biology. It was not polite, silent listening for the internal witness to arise. It was not a triviality or a temporary meal for a lifetime of starving poor. It was meaning. It was purpose. It was the soul speaking loudly in the form of a woman who wanted, demanded to be heard.
Keeping the summer plans intact, Alice spent the season bicycling in Europe. When she returned to London the British suffrage movement was bursting. Alice joined in the two scheduled suffrage parades and rallies. June 13th, thousands of women marched including a U.S. group led by Anna Howard Shaw. Dressed in white, pushing carriages, demanding attention and widening their influence, they marched through London to collect at Royal Albert Hall. June 21st, seven separate parades converged into one massive rally in Hyde Park of 30,000 (many reports of more) suffragettes in white, green and purple. Alice marched in Christabel’s contingent, leading with a banner, “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.” It was so spectacular and strategic, it was written about all over the world. The New York Times reported it in detail.
Alice’s notes were now about women speaking in the public square, the impact of pageantry and garnering media attention. She was witnessing the personal transformation of unrealized and housebound women into heartfelt activists working on liberation through camaraderie and asserting their voices. She saw, as all activists do, the activist is activated by doing something bold never to return to faintheartedness again. It was the same realization Gandhi would offer the women of India twenty years later, inviting them to protest in the public square knowing that such an action would create a permanent awakening.
Alice rented a little place at 31 Red Lion Street, London. It was two unfurnished rooms and her first home. Alive with purpose, she went to all the suffrage meetings she could, and began studying with the most militant. As was the practice, the “newbies,” were sent to street corners to hawk the Women’s Social and Political Union’s paper, Votes For Women. (WSPU) Like dozens of other burgeoning activists, Alice was finding her public voice.
Christabel’s mother, Emmeline Pankhurst, the resolute, vocal, daring and brave suffrage commander was nothing like the cautious, mannerly, thoughtful, Tacie Paul, Alice’s mother. Mrs. Paul was concerned with the newspaper reports of arrests and violence in the British suffrage movement. She wrote Alice often about coming home, sending a hundred dollars, here and there, for glasses, clothes and dental work. After several scholarship applications failed and money spats escalated with her mother, it appeared that Alice would have no choice but to leave Britain.
Just as plans were developing to set sail for the U.S., Christabel asked Alice to partake in an arrestible protest directed at Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith. It was an activist’s iconic call to be brave, to step beyond expectation, to break all boundaries both social and internal, It was delivered by the irresistible patron of her awakening. Alice could not refuse. Quaker resolve meets Pankhurst action. A lightning bolt of an encounter.
She had to say yes. She had to practice the militancy she was growing to understand and admire. She wrote her mother that she would not be coming home. Instead she collected her nerves, wrote yes in a note to the WSPU, paced around the post box for hours and, finally, dropped it in. Any activist who has said yes in advance of a daring public action can easily understand this rush of fear and second guessing. All the while it is the soul insisting that this is a vocation that cannot be ignored. As Doris Stevens said, “You may delay it. You cannot stop it. We want to accelerate it.”
Alice was directed to attend the preparation meeting, led by Sylvia Pankhurst and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence. The women were given explicit directions. They were told what to wear, what to do and to expect to be arrested. June 29, 1909, with Mrs. Pankhurst at the lead, they marched twelve across to the St. Stephens entrance to Parliament demanding to see the Prime Minister. With clubs and fists, the police turned them away line by line. Dressed in triple thick clothes, the protesters stepped up volunteering to receive the violent blows. It is the same technique Gandhi and King would use decades later to demonstrate that justice will not be turned away, even in the face of personal harm. With slingshots, some of the women pelted stones with petitions attached at Parliament windows. Arrests began, Alice among them. She was taken to the police station where her third Prophetic Encounter awaited her.
That night one hundred women and a few men were arrested for confronting the Prime Minister for their Right to Petition. They were taken to the London police precinct that served the Parliament district. Standing in the midst of it all, Alice described the scene; ladies and police, hats and batons, gavels and all manners of processing churning around her. In the visible distance was the officers’ recreation area. Apart from the bedlam, leaning on the billiard table was a tall, red-haired, stately woman with an American flag pin on her lapel ~ Miss Lucy Burns, Catholic from Brooklyn, Vassar class of 1902. She was all that Alice was not. While Alice was self-contained, refined and studied; Lucy was outgoing, theatrical and attractive. The party came to Lucy as Alice would be seated in a straight back chair on the sidelines. Both braver than any others, deeply committed to equality, a magnificent pair. Impossible to know at the time, as is always the case. Thunder found lightening. Light found Day.
Daughters of bankers who believed in their daughters. Religious homes; Quaker and Catholic carried the lessons of their faith throughout their lives. Alice questioning and, finally, repelled by the violence. Lucy took the opposite tack, slapping a police chief inspector’s face, tossing his cap to the floor and throwing ink bottles through windows. The banner for suffrage they mutually embraced was large enough to cover England, Scotland, Ireland and the United States.
Traveling through the Kingdom, Lucy and Alice heckled all the best, including a young new politician, Winston Churchill. Most famous of their conquests, November 9, 1909, a banquet given by the Lord Mayor in Guildhall. Oddly symbolic of their personalities, Alice dressed as a char woman and Lucy in an evening gown set off to heckle and demand votes for women. Lucy got close enough to Churchill to say right to his face, “How can you dine here while women are starving in prison?” referring to those who were on hunger strikes. Amelia Brown, who was with Alice, threw her shoe and broke a window as they both shouted, “Votes for Women!”
Alice was arrested and sentenced to a month of hard labor in Holloway prison. The WSPU women refused to wear prison clothes or to eat. Suffrage hunger strikers were now being brutally force-fed. If they refused to open their mouths, the hose was plunged down their nostrils. Famously, Alice had a particularly painful and difficult time, her cries heard throughout the prison. She fought back to the point where the nurses tied her torso to the chair with sheets as the doctor carelessly jammed the metal tube into her nose. This torture happened to Alice a record fifty-five times. In a letter to her mother, Alice wrote it is, “simply a policy of passive resistance and, as a Quaker, thee ought to approve of that.”
After three years abroad and only twenty-five years old Alice Paul returned to her family a trained and veteran suffragette, an experienced prisoner and a woman who found her passion. She was a strategist with purpose who would not be deterred. January 20, 1910, it might have looked like a fine young lady was walking down the gangplank in Philadelphia but militancy had never been so deftly understood by one so perfectly timed.
1911, Alice and Lucy reunited in America. Women had just won the vote in Washington state. The vision for national voting rights was on the horizon. It was time to wake up the sleepy moderates of Mrs. Anna Howard Shaw’s National American Woman Suffrage Association. Alice was about to launch her brand of suffrage and Lucy agreed to help her for “a week.” Of course Lucy would be the match-head for Alice’s flint-strike for nine years. Pageant master would meet map-maker and all those who opposed Votes for Women would have the choice to acquiesce or extinguish in a golden hot flame.
When searching through the life of Miss Alice Paul for Prophetic Encounters, one might ask, why not Gandhi, why not Mrs. Pankhurst, why not Alva Belmont? Because this is not about fame or fortune. It is about an indelible ignition that fuels an unrelenting passion. It is about a singular ignition that lights again and again. It is about looking into the face of one who also carries such a soul force. In fact, it may not even be a shared mission, such as Gandhi meeting Margaret Sanger, both holding grave differences. It is about an activist’s heart which can only be perceived by another activist.
Within that heart-to-heart, there is a melancholy of never finishing, a knowing that nothing less will do and a brief satisfaction of being understood. There is a joy that occurs at the point of this encounter. It is a flash when looking into their eyes. You see them. You may see a bit of yourself but the best part, the immeasurable part, is at last you are seen.
Robert Clarkson Brooks, Christabel Pankhurst and Lucy Burns met a certain bar. They struck a chord within Miss Paul which made it clear life would never be the same. Beyond the moment, larger than imagined, there was a quickening, a profound transformative meeting. As Alice described after hearing Christabel only once, Alice was now a “heart and soul convert.” It was a conversion that lasted all of her life, to her last breath at age ninety-two.
As an activist, you can wonder about a Prophetic Encounter on your path but the knowing is only available in retrospect. Hold you lamp high for all to see. As the Quaker motto states, Mind the Light.
1. McKanan, Dan. Prophetic Encounters, Religion and the American Radical Tradition. 2011, Beacon Press.