Alice Paul 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession
how was Alice Paul associated with the woman suffrage procession?
how was Alice Paul associated with the woman suffrage procession?
One of Paul's first big projects was initiating and organizing the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession in Washington the day before President Wilson's inauguration. Paul was determined to put pressure on Wilson, because the President would have the most influence over Congress. She assigned volunteers to contact suffragists around the nation and recruit supporters to march in the parade. In a matter of weeks, Paul succeeded in gathering roughly eight-thousand marchers, representing most of the country. However, she had much more trouble gaining institutional support for the protest parade. Paul was insistent that the parade route go along Pennsylvania Avenue before President Wilson. The goal was to send the message that the push for women's suffrage existed before Wilson and would outlast him if need be. This route was originally resisted by DC officials, and according to biographer Christine Lunardini, Paul was the only one who truly believed the parade would take place on that route. Eventually the city ceded the route to NAWSA. However, this was not the end of the parade's troubles. The City Supervisor Sylvester claimed that the women would not be safe marching along the Pennsylvania Avenue route and strongly suggested the group move the parade. Paul responded by demanding Sylvester provide more police; something that was not done. On March 13, 1913 the parade gained a boost in legitimacy as Congress passed a special resolution ordering Sylvester to prohibit all ordinary traffic along the parade route and "prevent any interference" with the suffrage marchers.  On the day of the event, the procession proceeded along Paul's desired route. The event, which was led by notable labor lawyer Inez Milholland dressed in white and riding a horse was described by the New York Times as "one of the most impressively beautiful spectacles ever staged in this country." Multiple bands, banners, squadrons, chariots, and floats were also displayed in the parade representing all women's lives. One of the most notable sights was the lead banner in the parade which declared, "We Demand an Amendment to the United States Constitution Enfranchising the Women of the Country. "Over half a million people came to view the parade and with insufficient police protection, the situation soon devolved into a near-riot, with onlookers pressing so close to the women that they were unable to proceed. Police largely did nothing to protect the women from rioters. A senator who participated in the march later testified that he personally took the badge numbers of 22 officers who had stood idle, including 2 sergeants. Eventually, the Massachusetts and Pennsylvania national guards stepped in and students from the Maryland Agricultural College provided a human barrier to help the women pass. Some accounts even describe Boy Scouts as stepping in and providing first aid to the injured. The incident mobilized public dialogue about the police response to the women's demonstration, producing greater awareness and sympathy for NAWSA.  After the parade, the NAWSA's focus was lobbying for a constitutional amendment to secure the right to vote for women. Such an amendment had originally been sought by suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton who, as leaders of the NWSA, fought for a federal amendment to the constitution securing women's suffrage until the 1890 formation of NAWSA, which campaigned for the vote on a state-by-state basis. CANNOTANSWER
One of Paul's first big projects was initiating and organizing the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession
Alice Stokes Paul (January 11, 1885 – July 9, 1977) was an American Quaker, suffragist, feminist, and women's rights activist, and one of the main leaders and strategists of the campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits sex discrimination in the right to vote. Paul initiated, and along with Lucy Burns and others, strategized events such as the Woman Suffrage Procession and the Silent Sentinels, which were part of the successful campaign that resulted in the amendment's passage in 1920.

Paul often suffered police brutality and other physical abuse for her activism, always responding with non-violence and courage. She was jailed under terrible conditions in 1917 for her participation in a Silent Sentinels protest in front of the White House, as she had been several times during earlier efforts to secure the vote for women in England.

After 1920, Paul spent a half century as leader of the National Woman's Party, which fought for the Equal Rights Amendment, written by Paul and Crystal Eastman, to secure constitutional equality for women. She won a large degree of success with the inclusion of women as a group protected against discrimination by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 alongside legal scholar Pauli Murray.

Early life and education
Alice Stokes Paul was born on January 11, 1885 to William Mickle Paul I (1850–1902) and Tacie Parry Paul (1859–1930) at Paulsdale,  Mount Laurel Township, New Jersey. She was a namesake for Alice Stokes (1821–1889), her maternal grandmother and the wife of William Parry (1817–1888). Her siblings were Willam Mickle Paul II (1886–1958), Helen Paul Shearer (1889–1971), and Parry Haines Paul (1895–1956). She was a descendant of William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania. Her ancestors included participants in the New Jersey Committee of Correspondence in the Revolutionary era and a state legislative leader in the 19th century. She grew up in the Quaker tradition of public service. Alice Paul first learned about women's suffrage from her mother, a member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), and would sometimes join her mother in attending suffragist meetings.

Paul attended Moorestown Friends School, where she graduated at the top of her class. In 1901, she went to Swarthmore College, an institution co-founded by her grandfather. While attending Swarthmore, Paul served as a member on the Executive Board of Student Government, one experience which may have sparked her eventual excitement for political activism. She graduated from Swarthmore College with a bachelor's degree in biology in 1905.

Partly in order to avoid going into teaching work, Paul completed a fellowship year at a settlement house in New York City after her graduation, living on the Lower East Side at the College Settlement House. While working on settlement activities taught her about the need to right injustice in America, Paul soon decided that social work was not the way she was to achieve this goal: "I knew in a very short time I was never going to be a social worker, because I could see that social workers were not doing much good in the world... you couldn't change the situation by social work."

Paul then earned a Master of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania in 1907, after completing coursework in political science, sociology and economics. She continued her studies at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham, England, and took economics classes from the University of Birmingham, while continuing to earn money doing social work. She first heard Christabel Pankhurst speak at Birmingham. When she later moved to London to study sociology and economics at the London School of Economics, she joined the militant suffrage group the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) led by Christabel and her mother, Emmeline Pankhurst. Paul was arrested repeatedly during suffrage demonstrations and served three jail terms. After returning from England in 1910, she continued her studies at the University of Pennsylvania, earning a Ph.D. in sociology. Her dissertation was entitled "The Legal Position of Women in Pennsylvania"; it discussed the history of the women's movement in Pennsylvania and the rest of the U.S., and urged woman suffrage as the key issue of the day.

Paul later received her law degree (LL.B) from the Washington College of Law at American University in 1922, after the suffrage fight was over. In 1927, she earned a master of laws degree, and in 1928, a doctorate in civil law from American University.

Career

Britain

Early work in British woman suffrage

In 1907, after completing her master's degree at the University of Pennsylvania, Paul moved to England, where she eventually became deeply involved with the British women's suffrage movement, regularly participating in demonstrations and marches of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). After a "conversion experience" seeing Christabel Pankhurst speak at the University of Birmingham, Paul became enamored of the movement. She first became involved by selling a Suffragist magazine on street corners. This was a particularly difficult task considering the animosity towards the Suffragists and opened her eyes to the abuse that women involved in the movement faced. These experiences, combined with the teachings of Professor Beatrice Webb, convinced Paul that social work and charity could not bring about the needed social changes in society: this could only be accomplished through equal legal status for women.

While in London, Paul also met Lucy Burns, a fellow American activist, whilst arrested in a British police station, who would become an important ally for the duration of the suffrage fight, first in England, then in the United States. The two women quickly gained the trust of prominent WSPU members and began organizing events and campaign offices. When Emmeline Pankhurst attempted to spread the movement to Scotland, Paul and Burns accompanied her as assistants.

Paul quickly gained the trust of fellow WSPU members through both her talent with visual rhetoric and her willingness to put herself in physical danger in order to increase the visibility of the suffrage movement. While at the WSPU's headquarters in Edinburgh, Paul and local suffragists made plans to protest a speech by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sir Edward Grey. For a week prior, they spoke with people on the streets to promote knowledge about why they were protesting against the Cabinet member. At the meeting, after Grey discussed proposed legislation he claimed would lead to prosperity, Paul stood up and exclaimed: “Well, these are very wonderful ideals, but couldn't you extend them to women?” Police responded by dragging her out of the meeting and through the streets to the police station where she was arrested. As planned, this act was viewed by many as a public silencing of legitimate protest and resulted in an increase of press coverage and public sympathy.

Later events involved even more risk of bodily harm. Before a political meeting at St. Andrew's Hall in Glasgow in August 1909, Paul camped out on the roof of the hall so that she could address the crowd below. When she was forced by police to descend, crowds cheered her effort. Later, when Paul, Burns, and fellow suffragettes attempted to enter the event, they were beaten by police as sympathetic bystanders attempted to protect them. After Paul and her fellow protesters were taken into custody, crowds gathered outside the police station demanding the women's release.

On November 9, 1909, in honor of Lord Mayor's Day, the Lord Mayor of London hosted a banquet for cabinet ministers in the city's Guild Hall. Paul planned the WSPU's response; she and Amelia Brown disguised themselves as cleaning women and entered into the building with the normal staff at 9:00 am. Once in the building, the women hid until the event started that evening. It was then that they came out of hiding and "took their stand". When Prime Minister H. H. Asquith stood to speak, Brown threw her shoe through a pane of stained glass and both women yelled "Votes for women!" Following this event, both women were arrested and sentenced to one month hard labor after refusing to pay fines and damages. She was imprisoned at Holloway Prison in London.

Civil disobedience and hunger strikes 
While associated with the Women's Social and Political Union, Paul was arrested seven times and imprisoned three times. It was during her time in prison that she learned the tactics of civil disobedience from Emmeline Pankhurst. Chief among these tactics was demanding to be treated as a political prisoner upon arrest. This not only sent a message about the legitimacy of the suffragists to the public but also had the potential to provide tangible benefits. In many European countries, including England, political prisoners were given a special status: "[T]hey were not searched upon arrest, not housed with the rest of the prisoner population, not required to wear prison garb, and not force-fed if they engaged in hunger strikes." Though arrested suffragettes often were not afforded the status of political prisoners, this form of civil disobedience provided a lot of press for the WSPU. For example, during a London arrest (after being denied political prisoner status), Paul refused to put on prisoner's clothing. After the prison matrons were unable to forcibly undress her, they requested assistance from male guards. This shockingly improper act provided extensive press coverage for the suffrage movement.

Another popular civil disobedience tactic used by the Suffragettes was hunger striking. The first WSPU related hunger strike was conducted by sculptor Marion Wallace Dunlop in June 1909. By that fall it was being widely used by WSPU members because of its effectiveness in publicizing their mistreatment and gaining quick release from prison wardens. Refusing food worked in securing an early release for Paul during her first two arrests. However, during her third prison stint, the warden ordered twice daily force-feeding to keep Paul strong enough to finish out her month-long sentence.

Though the prisons staunchly maintained that the force-feeding of prisoners was for their own benefit, Paul and other women described the process as torturous. At the end of her month in prison, Paul had developed severe gastritis. She was carried out of prison and immediately tended to by a doctor. However, after this event, her health was permanently scarred; she often developed colds and flu which would sometimes require hospitalization.

Paul had been given a Hunger Strike Medal 'for Valour' by WSPU.

United States 

After the ordeal of her final London imprisonment, Paul returned to the United States in January 1910 to continue her recovery and to develop a plan for suffrage work back home. Paul's experiences in England were well-publicized, and the American news media quickly began following her actions upon her return home. She drew upon the teachings of Woodbrooke and her religion and quickly decided that she wanted to embrace a single goal as a testimony. The single goal she chose was the recognition of women as equal citizens.

Paul re-enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, pursuing her Ph.D., while speaking about her experiences in the British suffrage movement to Quaker audiences and starting to work towards United States suffrage on the local level. After completing her dissertation, a comprehensive overview of the history of the legal status of United States women, she began participating in National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) rallies, and in April 1910 was asked to speak at NAWSA's annual convention. After this major opportunity, Paul and Burns proposed to NAWSA leadership a campaign to gain a federal amendment guaranteeing the vote for women. This was wholly contrary to NAWSA's state-by-state strategy. Paul and Burns were laughed at by NAWSA leadership; the only exception was Jane Addams, who suggested that the women tone down their plan. As a response, Paul asked to be placed on the organization's Congressional Committee.

1913 Woman Suffrage Procession 

One of Paul's first big projects was initiating and organizing the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession in Washington the day before President Wilson's inauguration. Paul was determined to put pressure on Wilson, because the President would have the most influence over Congress. She assigned volunteers to contact suffragists around the nation and recruit supporters to march in the parade. In a matter of weeks, Paul succeeded in gathering roughly eight thousand marchers, representing most of the country. However, she had much more trouble gaining institutional support for the protest parade. Paul was insistent that the parade route go along Pennsylvania Avenue before President Wilson. The goal was to send the message that the push for women's suffrage existed before Wilson and would outlast him if need be. This route was originally resisted by DC officials, and according to biographer Christine Lunardini, Paul was the only one who truly believed the parade would take place on that route. Eventually the city ceded the route to NAWSA. However, this was not the end of the parade's troubles. The City Supervisor Sylvester claimed that the women would not be safe marching along the Pennsylvania Avenue route and strongly suggested the group move the parade. Paul responded by demanding Sylvester provide more police; something that was not done. On March 3, 1913, the parade gained a boost in legitimacy as Congress passed a special resolution ordering Sylvester to prohibit all ordinary traffic along the parade route and "prevent any interference" with the suffrage marchers.

On the day of the event, the procession proceeded along Paul's desired route. The event, which was led by notable labor lawyer Inez Milholland dressed in white and riding a horse, was described by the New York Times as "one of the most impressively beautiful spectacles ever staged in this country". Multiple bands, banners, squadrons, chariots, and floats were also displayed in the parade representing all women's lives. One of the most notable sights was the lead banner in the parade which declared, "We Demand an Amendment to the United States Constitution Enfranchising the Women of the Country." Some participating groups and leaders, however, wanted black and white women's organizations and state delegations to be segregated; after much discussion, NAWSA decided black women could march where they wished. Still, Ida B. Wells was asked not to march with the Illinois delegation; ultimately, she joined the Chicago group and continued the march with the state delegation.

Over half a million people came to view the parade, and with insufficient police protection, the situation soon devolved into a near-riot, with onlookers pressing so close to the women that they were unable to proceed. Police largely did nothing to protect the women from rioters. A senator who participated in the march later testified that he personally took the badge numbers of 22 officers who had stood idle, including 2 sergeants. Eventually, the Massachusetts and Pennsylvania national guards stepped in and students from the Maryland Agricultural College provided a human barrier to help the women pass. Some accounts even describe Boy Scouts as stepping in and providing first aid to the injured. The incident mobilized public dialogue about the police response to the women's demonstration, producing greater awareness and sympathy for NAWSA.

After the parade, the NAWSA's focus was lobbying for a constitutional amendment to secure the right to vote for women. Such an amendment had originally been sought by suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton who, as leaders of the NWSA, fought for a federal amendment to the constitution securing women's suffrage until the 1890 formation of NAWSA, which campaigned for the vote on a state-by-state basis.

National Woman's Party

Paul's militant methods started to create tension between her and the leaders of NAWSA, who thought she was moving too aggressively in Washington. Eventually, disagreements about strategy and tactics led to a break with NAWSA. Paul formed the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage and, later, the National Woman's Party (NWP) in 1916.

The NWP began introducing some of the methods used by the suffrage movement in Britain and focused entirely on achieving a constitutional amendment for woman suffrage. Alva Belmont, a multi-millionaire socialite at the time, was the largest donor to Paul's efforts. The NWP was accompanied by press coverage and the publication of the weekly newspaper, The Suffragist.

Silent Sentinels

In the US presidential election of 1916, Paul and the National Woman's Party (NWP) campaigned in western states where women could already vote against the continuing refusal of President Woodrow Wilson and other incumbent Democrats to actively support the Suffrage Amendment. Paul went to Mabel Vernon to help her organize a picketing campaign. In January 1917, the NWP staged the first political protest and picketing at the White House. Picketing had been legalized by the 1914 Clayton Antitrust Act, so the women were not doing anything illegal. The pickets, participating in a nonviolent civil disobedience campaign known as the "Silent Sentinels", dressed in white, silent and with 2,000 taking part over two years, maintained a presence six days a week, holding banners demanding the right to vote. Paul knew the only way they could accomplish their goal was by displaying the President's attitude toward suffrage, so picketing would achieve this in the best manner. Each day Paul would issue "General Orders", selecting women to be in charge and who would speak for the day. She was the "Commandant" and Mabel Vernon was the "Officer of the Day". In order to get volunteers for the pickets, Paul created state days, such as Pennsylvania Day, Maryland Day, and Virginia Day, and she created special days for professional women, such as doctors, nurses, and lawyers.

After the United States entered World War I in April 1917, many people viewed the picketing Silent Sentinels as disloyal. Paul made sure the picketing would continue. In June 1917, picketers were arrested on charges of "obstructing traffic". Over the next six months, many, including Paul, were convicted and incarcerated at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia (which later became the Lorton Correctional Complex) and the District of Columbia Jail.

When the public heard the news of the first arrests, some were surprised that leading suffragists and very well-connected women were going to prison for peacefully protesting. President Wilson received bad publicity from this event, and was livid with the position he was forced into. He quickly pardoned the first women arrested on July 19, two days after they had been sentenced, but reporting on the arrests and abuses continued. The Boston Journal, for example, stated, "The little band representing the NWP has been abused and bruised by government clerks, soldiers and sailors until its efforts to attract the President's attention has sunk into the conscience of the whole nation."

Suffragists continued picketing outside the White House after the Wilson pardon, and throughout World War I. Their banners contained such slogans as "Mr. President, How Long Must Women Wait For Liberty?" and "We Shall Fight for the Things Which We Have Always Held Nearest Our Hearts—For Democracy, For The Right of Those Who Submit To Authority To Have A Voice in Their Own Governments." With the hope of embarrassing Wilson, some of the banners contained his quotes. Wilson ignored these women, but his daughter Margaret waved in acknowledgement. Although the suffragists protested peacefully, their protests were sometimes violently opposed. While protesting, young men would harass and beat the women, with the police never intervening on behalf of the protesters. Police would even arrest other men who tried to help the women who were getting beaten. Even though they were protesting during wartime, they maintained public support by agitating peacefully. Throughout this time, more protesters were arrested and sent to Occoquan or the District Jail. Pardons were no longer offered.

Prison, hunger strikes, passage of 19th Amendment

In solidarity with other activists in her organization, Paul purposefully strove to receive the seven-month jail sentence that started on October 20, 1917. She began serving her time in the District Jail.

Whether sent to Occoquan or the District Jail, the women were given no special treatment as political prisoners and had to live in harsh conditions with poor sanitation, infested food, and dreadful facilities. In protest of the conditions at the District Jail, Paul began a hunger strike. This led to her being moved to the prison's psychiatric ward and being force-fed raw eggs through a feeding tube. "Seems almost unthinkable now, doesn't it?" Paul told an interviewer from American Heritage when asked about the forced feeding. "It was shocking that a government of men could look with such extreme contempt on a movement that was asking nothing except such a simple little thing as the right to vote."

On November 14, 1917, the suffragists who were imprisoned at Occoquan endured brutality allegedly endorsed by prison authorities which became known as the "Night of Terror". The National Woman's Party (NWP) went to court to protest the treatment of the women such as Lucy Burns, Dora Lewis and Alice Cosu, her cellmate in Occoquan Prison, who suffered a heart attack at seeing Dora's condition. The women were later moved to the District Jail where Paul languished. Despite the brutality that she experienced and witnessed, Paul remained undaunted, and on November 27 and 28 all the suffragists were released from prison. Within two months Wilson announced there would be a bill on women's right to vote.

Equal Rights Amendment

Once suffrage was achieved in 1920, Paul and some members of the National Woman's Party shifted attention to constitutional guarantees of equality through the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which was written by Paul and Crystal Eastman. Drafted and delivered to Congress in 1923, the original text of the Equal Rights Amendment—which Paul and the National Woman's Party dubbed the "Lucretia Mott Amendment" in honor of this antislavery and suffrage activist of an earlier generation—read, "Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction." In 1943, the amendment was renamed the "Alice Paul Amendment". Its wording was changed to the version that still exists today: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." For Paul, the ERA had the same appeal as suffrage in that it was a constitutional amendment and a single-issue campaign that she believed could and should unite women around a common core goal. Paul understood the value of single issue politics for building coalitions and securing success.

Not everyone agreed about next steps or about the ERA, and from the start, the amendment had its detractors. While Paul's activism in the years after suffrage centered on securing legal protections for women's equality in the U.S. and abroad, other activists and some members of the NWP focused on a range of issues from birth control to educating newly enfranchised women voters. Some of Paul's earlier allies in suffrage found the ERA troubling, especially since they believed it would erode protective legislation—laws about working conditions or maximum hours that protected women in the workplace. If the ERA guaranteed equality, opponents argued, protective legislation for women would be null and void. The rival League of Women Voters (LWV), which championed workplace legislation for women, opposed the Equal Rights Amendment. Paul and her cohorts, including a small group from the NWP, thought that sex-based workplace legislation restricted women's ability to compete for jobs with men and earn good wages. In fact, Paul believed that protective legislation hurt women wage earners because some employers simply fired them rather than implement protections on working conditions that safeguarded women. Women were paid less than men, lost jobs that required them to work late nights—often a prohibition under protective legislation—and they had long been blocked from joining labor unions on par with men. She also believed that women should be treated under the law the same way men were and not as a class that required protection. To Paul, such protections were merely "legalized inequality," a position shared by suffragist Harriot Stanton Blatch. To Paul, the ERA was the most efficient way to ensure legal equality. Paul expected women workers to rally behind the ERA; some did, many did not. While early on there was hope among NWP members that they could craft a bill that would promote equality while also guaranteeing labor protection for women, to Paul, that was a contradiction. What's more, she was surprised when Florence Kelley, Ethel Smith, Jane Addams and other suffragists parted with her and aligned with protective legislation.

While Paul continued to work with the NWP, and even served as president again in the 1940s, she remained steadfastly committed to women's equality as her singular mission. Along with the ERA, Paul worked on behalf of similar efforts in state legislation and in international contexts. She helped ensure that the United Nations proclamations include equality for women and hoped that this would encourage the United States to follow suit. Paul worked to change laws that altered a woman's citizenship based on that of her husband. In the U.S., women who married men from foreign countries lost their U.S. citizenship and were considered by the U.S. to be citizens of whatever country their husbands were from. To Paul, this was a violation of equal rights, and as such, she worked on behalf of the international Equal Nationality Treaty in 1933 and in the U.S. for the successful passage of the Equal Nationality Act in 1934, which let women retain their citizenship upon marriage. Just after the founding of the United Nations in 1945, Paul wanted to ensure that women's equality was a part of the organization's charter and that its Commission on Human Rights included a focus on women's equality in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She prevailed: the final version of the Declaration in 1948 opened with a reference to "equal rights of men and women".

The ERA was introduced in Congress in 1923 and had various peaks and valleys of support in the years that followed, as Paul continued to push for its passage. There were favorable committee reports in Congress in the late 1930s, and with more women working in men's jobs during the war, public support for the ERA also increased. In 1946, the ERA passed by three votes in the Senate, not the majority needed for it to advance. Four years later, it would garner the Senate votes but fail in the House, thereby halting it from moving forward.

Paul was encouraged when women's movement activism gained steam in the 1960s and 1970s, which she hoped would spell victory for the ERA. When the bill finally passed Congress in 1972, Paul was unhappy about the changes in the wording of the ERA that now included time limits for securing its passage. Advocates argued that this compromise—the newly added seven-year deadline for ratification in the states—enabled the ERA's passage in Congress, but Paul correctly predicted that the inclusion of a time limit would ensure its defeat. To include a deadline meant that if the ERA was not ratified by 38 states within seven years, it would fail and supporters would effectively have to start from scratch again if they wanted to see it passed (something that was not the case with the suffrage or other proposed constitutional amendments). In addition, this version put enforcement power in the hands of the federal government only; Paul's original and 1943 reworded version required both states and the federal government to oversee its provisions. Paul's version was strategic: politicians who believed in states' rights, including many Southern states, were more likely to support an ERA that gave states some enforcement authority than a version that did not. Paul was proved correct: while the ERA did receive a three-year extension from Congress, it remained three states short of those needed for ratification.

States continued to attempt to ratify the ERA long after the deadline passed, including Nevada in 2017 and Illinois in 2018. In 2017 and again in 2019, the Senate and House introduced resolutions to remove the deadline from the ERA, measures that, if passed, would make the amendment viable again.

1964 Civil Rights Act

Paul played a major role in adding protection for women in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, despite the opposition of liberals who feared it would end protective labor laws for women. The prohibition on sex discrimination was added to the Civil Rights Act by Howard W. Smith, a powerful Virginia Democrat who chaired the House Rules Committee. Smith's amendment was passed by a teller vote of 168 to 133. For twenty years Smith had sponsored the Equal Rights Amendment in the House because he believed in equal rights for women, even though he opposed equal rights for blacks. For decades he had been close to the National Woman's Party and especially to Paul. She and other feminists had worked with Smith since 1945 trying to find a way to include sex as a protected civil rights category.

Personal life and death

Paul had an active social life until she moved to Washington in late 1912. She enjoyed close relationships with women and befriended and occasionally dated men. Paul did not preserve private correspondence for the most part, so few details about her personal life are available. Once Paul devoted herself to winning the vote for women, she placed the suffrage effort first in her life. Nevertheless, Elsie Hill and Dora Kelly Lewis, two women whom she met early in her work for NAWSA, remained close to her all their lives. She knew William Parker, a scholar she met at the University of Pennsylvania, for several years; he may have tendered a marriage proposal in 1917. A more thorough discussion of Paul's familial relations and friendships is found in J.D. Zahniser's biography.

Paul became a vegetarian around the time of the suffrage campaign.

Paul died at the age of 92 on July 9, 1977, at the Greenleaf Extension Home, a Quaker facility in Moorestown, New Jersey, less than a mile from her birthplace and childhood home at Paulsdale. She is buried at Westfield Friends Burial Ground, Cinnaminson, New Jersey, U.S. People frequently leave notes at her tombstone to thank her for her lifelong work on behalf of women's rights.

Legacy

Paul was posthumously inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1979, and into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2010.

Her alma mater, Swarthmore College, named a dormitory Alice Paul Residence Hall in her honor. Montclair State University in New Jersey has also named a dormitory (Alice Paul Hall) in her honor. On April 12, 2016, President Barack Obama designated Sewall-Belmont House as the Belmont–Paul Women's Equality National Monument, named for Alice Paul and Alva Belmont. The University of Pennsylvania, her doctoral alma mater, maintains the Alice Paul Center for Research on Gender, Sexuality, and Women.

Two countries have honored her by issuing a postage stamp: Great Britain in 1981 and the United States in 1995. The U.S. stamp was the $0.78 Great Americans series stamp.

Paul appeared on a United States half-ounce $10 gold coin in 2012, as part of the First Spouse Gold Coin Series. A provision in the Presidential $1 Coin Program directs that Presidential spouses be honored. As President Chester A. Arthur was a widower, Paul is shown representing "Arthur's era". The U.S. Treasury Department announced in 2016 that an image of Paul will appear on the back of a newly designed $10 bill along with Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession that Paul initiated and organized. Designs for the new $5, $10, and $20 bills will be unveiled in 2020 in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of American women winning the right to vote via the 19th Amendment.

In 1987, a group of New Jersey women raised the money to purchase Paul's papers when they came up for auction so that an archive could be established. Her papers and memorabilia are now held by the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. In 1990, the same group, now the Alice Paul Institute, purchased the brick farmhouse, Paulsdale, in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, where Paul was born. Paulsdale is a National Historic Landmark and is on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. The Alice Paul Institute keeps her legacy alive with educational exhibits about her life, accomplishments and advocacy for gender equality.

Hilary Swank played Paul in the 2004 movie Iron Jawed Angels, which portrayed the 1910 women's suffrage movement for passage of the 19th Amendment. In 2018, Alice Paul was a central character in an episode of Timeless (Season 2, Episode 7) which alludes to Paul giving an impassioned speech to President Woodrow Wilson during a march that ends in police violence upon the suffragist marchers. According to history, Paul was at the event, and was arrested, but there is no evidence that she spoke to Wilson on that day.

On January 11, 2016, Google Doodle commemorated her 131st birthday.

See also 

Iron Jawed Angels, 2004 film about Alice Paul and Lucy Burns and their movement which resulted in the passage of the 19th Amendment.
List of civil rights leaders
List of suffragists and suffragettes
List of women's rights activists
Timeline of women's suffrage
Timeline of women's suffrage in the United States
Women's suffrage organizations

References

Further reading
 Baker, Jean H. Sisters: The Lives of American Suffragists. New York: Hill and Wang, 2005. 
 _. Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
 Butler, Amy E. Two Paths to Equality: Alice Paul and Ethel M. Smith in the ERA Debate, 1921–1929. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. 
 Cahill, Bernadette. Alice Paul, the National Woman's Party and the Vote: The First Civil Rights Struggle of the 20th Century. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2005. 
 Cassidy, Tina. Mr. President, how Long Must We Wait?: Alice Paul, Woodrow Wilson, and the Fight for the Right to Vote (2019).
 
 Cullen-Dupont, Kathryn. American Women Activists' Writings: An Anthology, 1637–2002. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002. 
 Dodd, Lynda G. "Parades, Pickets, and Prison: Alice Paul and the Virtues of Unruly Constitutional Citizenship." Journal of Law and Politics 24 (2008): 339–433. online
 Evans, Sara M. Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America. New York: The Free Press, 1989. 
 
 Hartmann, Susan M. "Paul, Alice"; American National Biography Online Feb. 2000 Access June 5, 2014
 
 Hill, Jeff. Defining Moments: Women's Suffrage. Detroit: Omnigraphics, Inc., 2006. 
 Irwin, Inez Haynes. The Story of Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party. Fairfax: Denlinger's Publishers, LTD, 1964.
 Leleux, Robert. "Suffragettes March on Washington." The American Prospect 24 (2013): 81.
 Lunardini, Christine. Alice Paul: Equality for Women. Boulder: Westview Press, 2013. 
 ___. From Equal Suffrage to Equal Rights: Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party, 1910–1928. New York: New York University Press, 1986.
 
 Olson, Tod. "One Person, One Vote." Scholastic Update 127 (1994): 15
 Stevens, Doris. Jailed for Freedom. New York: Liverwright Publishing Corporation, 1920.
 Stillion Southard, Belinda Ann. "The National Woman's Party's Militant Campaign for Woman Suffrage: Asserting Citizenship Rights through Political Mimesis." (2008). PhD thesis, U of Maryland online
 
 
 Willis, Jean L. "Alice Paul: The Quintessential Feminist," in Feminist Theorists, ed. Dale Spender (1983).

External links

The Alice Paul Institute
Alice Paul at Lakewood Public Library:  Women In History
The Sewall-Belmont House & Museum – Home of the historic National Woman's Party
Biographical sketch at the University of Pennsylvania
Manuscript version of Paul's PhD dissertation, "The Legal Position of Women in Pennsylvania" at the University of Pennsylvania
Papers, 1785–1985. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
"I Was Arrested, Of Course…", American Heritage, February 1974, Volume 25, Issue 2. Interview of Alice Paul by Robert S. Gallagher.
Conversations with Alice Paul: Woman Suffrage and the Equal Rights Amendment, An Interview Conducted by Amelia R. Fry, 1979, The Bancroft Library
Michals, Debra.  "Alice Paul".  National Women's History Museum.  2015.

 
1885 births
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The Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage was an American organization formed in 1913 led by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns to campaign for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women's suffrage. It was inspired by the United Kingdom's suffragette movement, which Paul and Burns had taken part in. Their continuous campaigning drew attention from congressmen, and in 1914 they were successful in forcing the amendment onto the floor for the first time in decades.

Early history
Alice Paul created the Congressional Union (CU) after joining the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and gaining leadership of its Congressional Committee. 
The CU was initiated to assist the NAWSA Congressional Committee and its officers were part of that committee. 
The CU shared the same goal with NAWSA, to gain an amendment to the United States Constitution giving all women the right to vote. In the beginning, the CU worked within NAWSA to strengthen the declining Congressional Committee. In March 1913, after realizing the amount of work to be done, the CU became in charge of their own operations and funding but still remained affiliated with NAWSA. In the fall of 1913, Carrie Chapman Catt of NAWSA accused the CU of insubordination and financial irregularities, allegations which she later retracted. The strategies of the two organizations were conflicting and NAWSA's leadership felt threatened. In December 1913, the National American Woman Suffrage Association selected a new Congressional Committee and formally cut ties with the Congressional Union.

Initiative 
The Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage appealed to young women with a new approach in the fight for women's suffrage, inspired by the British suffragettes. 
Alice Paul believed women should not have to beg for their rights. Paul introduced some of the militant methods used by the Women's Social and Political Union in Britain to the CU and its members. These included direct actions, organizing huge demonstrations, and the daily picketing of the White House. The CU had 4,500 members and had raised more than $50,000 in funds by 1914. Over time, the efforts of hundreds of members led to their arrest and sometimes imprisonment.

Organization 
The Congressional Union's headquarters were located on F Street in Washington, D.C., near the Willard Hotel in a highly visible office which they paid for themselves. They started women's "suffrage schools" to spread awareness about their cause and held multiple meetings each day. The CU was never organized by states or districts, but there were different branches of the organization in a number of states. The Washington headquarters was central to their work but they were also a mobile organization. The CU published a newspaper called The Suffragist, featuring articles by prominent members including Alice Paul, Lucy Burns and Inez Milholland. The newspaper employed Nina Allender as its main cartoonist, and also published cartoons by artists such as Cornelia Barns, Boardman Robinson and Marietta Andrews.

Campaigning 
The Congressional Union actively campaigned for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing universal woman suffrage. Following the methods used by suffragettes in Britain, the CU fully blamed the majority party for failure to advance the Federal Suffrage Amendment. The majority party at the time was the Democratic Party, and Democrat Woodrow Wilson was president. Members traveled west and campaigned against Democrats in hopes of impeding their reelection. They even campaigned against Democrats who approved women's suffrage, despite criticism from the National American Woman Suffrage Association. They traveled through the west by train while using a number of tactics to increase their visibility and their whistle-stop speeches attracted the attention of reporters. Their campaign resulted in the defeat of 20 Democrats who supported suffrage, much to the dismay of NAWSA.

National Woman's Party 

The Congressional Union created the National Woman's Party at a meeting in Chicago in 1916. The party included members of the Congressional Union, and Alice Paul was in charge. A Campaign Committee was formed within the party with Anne Martin serving as chairman. In 1917, the two organizations officially joined together to form the National Woman's Party (NWP) and elected Alice Paul as their chairman.

Notable members

See also
List of suffragists and suffragettes
Timeline of women's suffrage
Women's suffrage organizations

References

External links

The Suffragist at Internet Archive
Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage newsletter collection - University of Maryland Libraries

Women's suffrage advocacy groups in the United States
Feminist political parties in the United States
Progressive Era in the United States
Alice Paul
National Woman's Party The Woman Suffrage Procession on the date march 3 1913, was the first suffragist parade in Washington, D.C. It was also the first large, organized march on Washington for political purposes. The procession was organized by the suffragists Alice Paul and Lucy Burns for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Planning for the event began in Washington in December 1912. The parade's purpose, stated in its official program, was to "march in a spirit of protest against the present political organization of society, from which women are excluded."

Participation numbers vary between 5,000 and 10,000 marchers. Suffragists and supporters marched down Pennsylvania Avenue on Monday, March 3, 1913, the day before President Woodrow Wilson's inauguration. Paul had selected the venue and date to maximize publicity, but met resistance from the D.C. police department. The demonstration consisted of a procession with floats, bands, and various groups representing women at home, in school, and in the workplace. At the Treasury Building, a pageant of allegorical tableaux was acted out during the parade. The final act was a rally at the Memorial Continental Hall with prominent speakers, including Anna Howard Shaw and Helen Keller.

Prior to the event, the issue of black participation in the march threatened to cause a rift with delegations from Southern states. Some black people did march with state delegations. A group from Howard University participated in the parade.  It is often said that black women were segregated at the back of the parade, however, contemporaneous sources confirm they marched with their respective state delegations or professional groups.

During the procession, district police failed to keep the enormous crowd off the street, impeding the marchers' progress. Many participants were subjected to heckling from spectators, though there were also many supporters present. The marchers were finally assisted by citizens' groups and eventually the cavalry. The police were subjected to a congressional inquiry due to security failures. The event premiered Paul's campaign to refocus the suffrage movement on obtaining a national constitutional amendment for woman's suffrage. Intended to pressure President Wilson to support an amendment, he resisted their demands for years afterward.

The procession was featured in the film Iron Jawed Angels in 2004. A new U.S. ten-dollar bill with parade imagery is planned for circulation in 2026.

Background

American suffragists Alice Paul and Lucy Burns spearheaded a drive to adopt a national strategy for women's suffrage in the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Paul and Burns had seen first-hand the effectiveness of militant activism while working for Emmeline Pankhurst in the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in Britain. Their education included rallies, marches, and demonstrations, knowledge of which the two would put to work back in America. They already had first-hand experience with imprisonment as a backlash against suffrage activism. They had gone on hunger strikes and suffered force-feeding. They were not afraid to be provocative, even knowing the potential consequences. The procession would be their first foray into moving into militant mode on a national stage.

Paul and Burns found that there were many suffragists who supported the WSPU's militant tactics, including Harriot Stanton Blatch, Alva Belmont, Elizabeth Robins, and Rhetta Child Dorr. Burns and Paul recognized that the women from the six states that had full suffrage at the time comprised a powerful voting bloc. They submitted a proposal to Anna Howard Shaw and the NAWSA leadership at their annual convention in 1912. The leadership was not interested in changing the state-by-state strategy and rejected the idea of holding a campaign that would hold the Democratic Party responsible. Paul and Burns appealed to prominent reformer Jane Addams, who interceded on their behalf, resulting in Paul being appointed chair of the Congressional Committee.

Up until this time, the woman's suffrage movement had relied on oratory and written arguments to keep the issue before the public. Paul believed that it was time to add a strong visual element to the campaign, even grander than what she had planned for the NAWSA 1912 conference. While her tactics were non-violent, Paul exploited elements of danger in her events. Her plan for using visual rhetoric was intended to have lasting impact. She felt it was time for women to stop begging for suffrage and demand it with political coercion instead. Though the suffragists had staged marches in many cities, this would be a first for Washington, D.C. It would also be the first large political demonstration in the nation's capital. The only previous similar demonstration was made by a group of five hundred men known as Coxey's Army, who had protested about unemployment in 1894.

At the time Paul and Burns were assigned to lead the Congressional Committee of the NAWSA, it was merely a shadow committee headed by Elizabeth Kent, wife of a California congressman, with an annual budget of ten dollars that mostly went unspent. With Paul and Burns in charge, the committee revived the push for a national suffrage amendment. At the end of 1913, Paul reported to the NAWSA that the committee had raised and expended over $25,000 on the suffrage cause for the year.

Paul and Burns persuaded NAWSA to endorse an immense suffrage parade in Washington, D.C., to coincide with newly elected President Woodrow Wilson's inauguration the following March. The NAWSA leadership turned over the entire operation to the committee. They organized volunteers, planned, and raised funds in preparation for the parade with little help from the NAWSA.

Planning

Committees and recruiting 
Once the board approved the parade in December 1912, it appointed Dora Lewis, Mary Ritter Beard, and Crystal Eastman to the committee, though they all worked outside of Washington. All money Paul collected had to be directed through the NAWSA, though she did not always comply.

Paul arrived in Washington, D.C. in December 1912 to begin organizing the event. By the time the Congressional Committee had its first meeting on January 2, 1913, in its new Washington headquarters, more than 130 women showed up to start work. Using the list of former committee members, Paul found few still alive or in the city, but she did find assistance.

Among local suffragists, she was aided by attorney Florence Etheridge and teacher Elsie Hill, daughter of a congressman. Kent, the former committee chair, was instrumental in opening doors in Washington to Paul and Burns. From the NAWSA, Paul recruited Emma Gillett and Helen Hamilton Gardener to be treasurer and publicity chair, respectively. Belva Lockwood, who had run for president in 1884, also attended the initial meeting. Paul recruited Hazel MacKaye to design professional floats and allegorical tableaux to be presented simultaneously with the procession. The parade was officially named the Woman Suffrage Procession, and the stated purpose per the event program was to "march in a spirit of protest against the present political organization of society, from which women are excluded." Doris Stevens, who worked closely with Paul, stated that "...the procession was to dramatize in numbers and beauty the fact that women wanted to vote - that women were asking the Administration in power in the national government to speed the day."

The timing of the date for the procession, March 3, was important, because incoming president Woodrow Wilson, whose inauguration was to take place the following day, would be put on notice that this would be a key issue during his term, and Paul wanted to put pressure on him to support a national amendment. It also ensured that the procession would enjoy a large audience and publicity. Many factors deterred Paul regarding her selected date: District suffragists worried about the weather; the superintendent of police objected to the timing; even Paul herself was concerned about the need to attract a large number of marchers in a short time frame and get them organized. Fortunately, Washington had congressional delegations from all the states, and some of their wives could be counted on to represent those states. Likewise, the embassies could provide marchers from distant countries.

In order to maximize the use of funds for publicity and building a national network, the Congressional Committee made it clear that participating organizations and delegations would need to fund their own travel, lodging, and other expenses.

Parade route and security 

Just as the timing of the parade was tied to the inauguration, so too, was the route that Paul preferred in order to have the maximum impact on public perception. She requested a permit to march down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Peace Monument to the Treasury Building, then on to the White House before ending at Continental Hall. District superintendent of police, Major Richard H. Sylvester, offered a permit for Sixteenth Street, which would have taken the procession through a residential area, past several embassies. He later claimed he had thought the suffragists wished to hold the parade at night and the police could not have provided sufficient security if they marched from the Capitol. Sylvester pointed out the rough character of lower Pennsylvania Avenue and the type of people likely to attend the inauguration. Paul was not satisfied with his alternative route. She took her request to the District commissioners and the press. Eventually they relented and granted her request. Elsie Hill and her mother had also put some pressure on Sylvester by appealing to Elsie's father in Congress. Congress had the ultimate responsibility and funding control over the District police department.

The presidential inauguration brought a huge influx of visitors from around the country. Media estimated crowds of a quarter to a half million people. Anticipating that most of these people would come to observe the suffrage parade, Paul was concerned about the ability of the local police force to handle the crowd; her disquiet proved to be justified by events. Sylvester had only volunteered a force of 100 officers, which Paul considered inadequate. She attempted to get intervention from President William Howard Taft, who referred her to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. The week before the parade, Congress passed a resolution directing district police to halt all traffic from the Peace Monument to 17th Street from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. on the day of the parade and prevent any interference with the procession. Paul recruited a woman with political connections to intervene. Elizabeth Selden Rogers contacted her brother-in-law, Secretary Stimson, to request cavalry to provide additional security. He first claimed that it was prohibited to use the soldiers for that purpose, but later agreed to place troops on standby in case of emergency.

Countering anti-suffrage sentiments 
Paul strategically chose to emphasize beauty, femininity, and traditional female roles in the procession. Her chosen theme for the procession was "Ideals and Virtues of American Womanhood". These characteristics were perceived by anti-suffragists as being most threatened by giving women the vote. She wanted to show that women could be all those things and still intelligent and competent to not only vote, but also to fill any other role in society. Attractiveness and professional talent were not mutually exclusive, and these ideals were embodied in the selection of the parade's herald, Inez Milholland, a labor lawyer from New York City who had been dubbed "the most beautiful suffragette". Milholland had served in the same role in a suffrage march in the city the previous year.

The procession

The line-up of marchers 
According to the media, the suffrage parade had become the primary draw over the inauguration itself. Special suffrage trains were hired to bring spectators from other cities, adding to the crowds in Washington. The novelty of the procession attracted enormous interest throughout the eastern U.S. As the parade participants gathered near the Peace Monument around noon, the police began roping off part of the parade route. Even before the parade began, the ropes were badly stretched and coming loose in places. The procession drew such a crowd that President-elect Wilson was mystified about why there were no people to be seen when he arrived in town that day.
Jane Walker Burleson on horseback, accompanying a model of the Liberty Bell brought from Philadelphia, led the procession as Grand Marshal, immediately followed by the herald, Milholland, on a white horse. A pale-blue cape flowed over her white suit, held on by a Maltese cross. Her banner proclaimed "Forward into Light", a phrase originated by Pankhurst and later used by Blatch. Immediately behind the herald was a wagon that boldly stated "We Demand An Amendment To The Constitution Of The United States Enfranchising The Women Of This Country". Next was the national board of the NAWSA, headed by Shaw.

To add to the visual impact, Paul dictated a color scheme for each group of marchers. The rainbow of colors represented women coming into the light of the future out of the darkness of the past. To add drama between groups of marching women, "Paul recruited 26 floats, 6 golden chariots,10 bands, 45 captains, 200 marshals, 120 pages, 6 mounted heralds, and 6 mounted brigades", according to Adams and Keene. Estimates about the number of participants in the procession varied from 5,000 to 10,000.

The first section had marchers and floats from countries where women already had the vote: Norway, Finland, Australia and New Zealand. The second section had floats depicting historic scenes from the suffrage movement in 1840, 1870, and 1890. Then came a float representing the state of the campaign in 1913 in a positive tableau of women inspiring a group of girls. A series of floats depicted men and women working side by side at home and in a variety of professions. They were followed by one with a man holding a representation of government on his shoulders while a woman with hands tied stood helpless at his side.

A float depicted nurses, followed by a marching group of nurses. Groups of women representing traditional roles of motherhood and homemaking came next, in an effort to change the image of suffragists as being sexless working women. There followed a carefully orchestrated order of professional women, beginning with various nursing groups, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the PTA, before finally adding in non-traditional careers such as lawyers, artists, and businesswomen.

After a float depicting the Bill of Rights came a banner that showed the nine suffrage states in bright colors with the remaining states in black, a theme that was also graphically depicted using women dressed similarly. They carried a banner suggesting that vote-less women were slave to men with the vote, quoting Abraham Lincoln: "No Country Can Exist Half Slave and Half Free". Another Lincoln quote was featured at the top of the official program: "I go for all sharing the privilege of the government who assist in bearing its burdens, by no means excluding women." Women from the suffrage states displayed their colorful organization banners on chariots that preceded each group.

One prominent group featured in the procession was the pilgrims led by "General" Rosalie Jones. The brown-caped hikers covered more than  from New York City to Washington in sixteen days. Their journey received considerable press coverage, and a large crowd assembled to greet them upon their arrival in the city on February 28.

Allegorical tableaux 
Simultaneous with the procession, an allegorical tableaux unfolded on the Treasury Building's steps. The pageant was written by dramatist Hazel MacKaye and directed by Glenna Smith Tinnin. These scenes were performed by silent actors to portray various attributes of patriotism and civic pride, ones that both men and women strove to emulate. The audience would recognize the presentation style from similar holiday events around the country. MacKaye set each scene using women clad in toga-style costumes and accompanied by symbolic parlor music that would also be familiar to the audience.

The act began with a relay of trumpet calls from the Peace Monument to the Treasury Building. The first scene featured Columbia, who stepped forward on stage to the strains of "The Star-Spangled Banner". She summoned Liberty, Charity, Justice, Hope and Peace to join her. In the final scene, Columbia placed herself as guardian over all these others and they assembled to watch the approaching procession of suffragists. By creating this stunning drama, Paul differentiated the American suffrage movement from Britain's "by fully appropriating the best possibilities of nonviolent visual rhetoric" per Adams and Keene.

Notable participants 
Some of the women listed were well-known prior to the event, others became noteworthy later. Most names come from the official event program.

 Dr. Nellie V. Mark served as marshal of the professional women of Maryland in the Maryland portion of the parade.
Jeannette Rankin, from Montana, marched under her state's sign; she returned to Washington four years later as a U.S. Representative.
Charlotte Anita Whitney, who later became a political figure in her home state of California, served as NAWSA's 2nd vice president and marched with the officers.
Mary Ware Dennett, of New York, also marched with the NAWSA board as corresponding secretary.
Susan Walker Fitzgerald, NAWSA recording secretary from Boston, later went on to serve in the Massachusetts legislature.
Katherine Dexter McCormick, NAWSA treasurer, became a notable philanthropist and major funder of birth control research.
Harriet Burton Laidlaw, 1st auditor on the NAWSA board, was from New York and a political activist on many issues.
Abby Scott Baker, a D. C. resident and activist, organized the floats and marchers in the section for foreign countries.
Georgiana Simpson,
Dorothy Bernard, born in South Africa, had an acting career in California, and organized the group of actresses in the procession.
Jane Delano, chair and founder of the American Red Cross Nursing Service, organized the nurse's group.
Carrie Clifford, American feminist author, clubwoman and civil rights activist
Lavinia Dock, a pioneer in nursing education, assisted Delano with the nursing section of the parade.
Jane Addams won worldwide recognition in the first third of the twentieth century as a pioneer social worker in America, as a feminist, and as an internationalistFola La Follette, Broadway actress from Wisconsin and lifelong activist, led the actress group in the march.
Lillian Wald, founder of community nursing and involved in the founding of the NAACP, led the nurses section.
Miss Georgia Simpson, philologist and the first African-American woman to receive a PhD in the United States.
Ellen Spencer Mussey, a D.C. attorney who later founded the Women's Bar Association of the District of Columbia, led women lawyers in the procession. She secured legislation in Congress to give women in D. C. equal rights to their children.
Mary Johnston, of Virginia, was a popular writer of historical fiction. She spoke at the rally at Continental Hall after the parade.
Estelle Willoughby Ions, a composer from Louisiana, led the musicians section.
Elizabeth Thacher Kent, worked to pass suffrage legislation in California, and was also an environmentalist. She contracted and organized the bands for the procession.
Julia Lathrop, Chief of the U. S. Children's Bureau, was the first woman to head a federal bureau, appointed by President Taft. She marched with the banner for Women in Government Service.
Annie Jenness Miller, clothing designer, advocate for dress reform, prominent lecturer, and building contractor, organized the grandstand committee.
Genevieve Clark Thomson, who later ran for Congress from Louisiana, led the Missouri delegation.
Harriet Taylor Upton, who became the first female to serve as vice-chair of the Republican National Committee, led the delegation from Ohio.
Florence Fleming Noyes, a dancer who played the role of Liberty, choreographed the entire tableaux.

Security failure 
The parade and tableaux at the Treasury Building were scheduled to begin simultaneously at 3 p.m. However, the trumpet call starting the procession did not sound until 3:25 p.m. At the lead were several police escort vehicles and six mounted officers in a wedge formation. By the time the front of the parade reached 5th Street, the crowd had completely blocked the avenue. At that point, the police escort seemed to vanish into the throng. Milholland and others on horseback used the animals to help push back the crowds. Paul, Burns and other committee members brought a couple of automobiles to the front to help create a passage for the procession. The police had done little to open the parade route as they'd been ordered to do by Congress. Sylvester, who was at the train station awaiting Wilson's arrival, heard about the problem and put out the call to the cavalry unit on standby at Fort Myers. However, the mounted soldiers did not arrive on the scene until around 4:30 p.m. They were then able to usher the parade to its completion.

Male and female spectators surged into the street, though men were in the majority. There were both hecklers and supporters, but parade-marshal Burleson and other women in the procession were intimidated, particularly by the hostile chants. The Evening Star (Washington) published a review highlighting positive responses to the parade and pageant. The crush of people led to trampling: more than two hundred people were treated for injuries at local hospitals. At one point, Paul sympathetically acknowledged that the police were overwhelmed and not enough of them had been assigned to the parade, but she soon changed her stance in order to maximize publicity for her cause. The police did actually arrest some spectators and fine them for crossing over the ropes.

Prior to the cavalry's arrival, other people began helping with crowd control. At times the marchers had been forced to go single file in order to move forward. Boy Scouts with batons helped push back spectators. A group of soldiers linked arms to hold people back. Some of the black drivers from the floats also stepped in to help. The Massachusetts and the Pennsylvania national guards stepped in, too. Eventually, boys from the Maryland Agricultural College created a human barrier protecting the women from the angry crowd and helping them progress forward to their destination.

Rally at Continental Hall 
The final act was a meeting at the Memorial Continental Hall (later part of the expanded DAR Constitution Hall). Speakers were Anna Howard Shaw, Carrie Chapman Catt, Mary Johnston, and Helen Adams Keller. Shaw, reflecting on the failure of police protection, stated that she was ashamed of the national capital, but she praised the marchers. She also recognized that they could use publicity about police failures to the suffragists' advantage. Blatch had used a similar security failure in New York in 1912 to the suffragists' advantage.

Aftermath

Alice Paul's response 
Though at first she sympathized with the overwhelmed police force at the parade, Paul quickly capitalized on the verbal abuse the marchers had endured. She blamed the police for colluding with violent opposition to the non-violent demonstration. She asked participants to write affidavits about negative reactions they'd experienced, which Paul used to request Congressional action against Chief Sylvester. She also used these statements to generate press releases in Washington and around the country, garnering additional publicity for the suffrage procession. The resulting publicity also brought in additional donations that helped Paul cover the event's cost of $13,750.

Paul's publicity campaign stressed that the marchers had demonstrated bravery and non-violent resistance to the hostile crowd. Several of the suffragists pointed out in the media that a government that couldn't protect its female citizens could not properly represent them. Paul's deft handling of the situation made woman's suffrage one of the most-discussed subjects in America.

Paul also orchestrated a meeting, primarily of political men who were suffrage supporters, at the Columbia Theater. The purpose was to add pressure on Congress to hold hearings about police misconduct. Key participants included activist attorney Louis Brandeis (who became a Supreme Court justice in 1916) and Minnesota senator Moses Edwin Clapp. She kept her role in organizing the event out of the spotlight.

Congressional response 
The Senate Committee on the District of Columbia quickly organized a subcommittee hearing to determine why the crowds at the parade had gotten out of hand. They listened to testimony and read numerous affidavits. Hearings were held March 6–13, and April 16–17. Sylvester defended his own actions and blamed individual policemen for disobeying his orders. In the end, Sylvester was exonerated, but public opinion about him was unfavorable. When he was finally forced to resign in 1915 due to an unrelated incident, the mishandling of the 1913 parade was seen as instrumental in his ouster.

President Wilson 
Alice Paul and the Congressional Union asked President Wilson to push Congress for a federal amendment, beginning with a deputation to the White House shortly after the parade and in several additional visits. He responded initially by saying he had never considered the matter, though he told a Colorado delegation in 1911 that he was indeed pondering the subject. Though he assured the women he would consider it, he did not act on the issue; eventually he flatly remarked there was no room for suffrage on his agenda. The deputation wished for Wilson to press his party to support suffrage legislation. He asserted that he had no influence over his party's actions in Congress, but for issues he considered important, he did use his leverage in a partisan manner, such as with repealing the Panama Canal tolls act.

When asked if it had been unwise for her to push Wilson for his stance on woman's suffrage, Paul responded that it was important to make the public aware of his position so they could use it against him when the time came to put pressure on the Democrats during an election. It took until 1918 for Wilson to finally change his stance on the suffrage amendment.

Impacts on the suffrage movement 
Paul inaugurated her leadership in the American suffrage movement with the 1913 procession. This event revived the push for a federal woman's suffrage amendment, a cause that the NAWSA had allowed to languish. Little more than a month after the parade, the Susan B. Anthony amendment was re-introduced in both houses of Congress. For the first time in decades it was debated on the floor. The demonstration on Pennsylvania Avenue was the precursor to Paul's other high-profile events that, along with actions by the NAWSA, culminated in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution in 1919 and its ratification in 1920.

Paul's focus on a federal amendment contrasted sharply with the NAWSA's state-by-state approach to suffrage, leading to a rift between the Constitutional Committee and the national board. The committee disassociated from the NAWSA and became the Congressional Union. The Congressional Union eventually became subsumed by the National Woman's Party, also led by Paul, in 1916.

Miscellaneous

In film 
The Woman Suffrage Procession was featured in the 2004 film Iron Jawed Angels, which chronicles the strategies of Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, and the National Woman's Party as they lobby and demonstrate for the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would assure voting rights for all American women.

United States currency 
On April 20, 2016, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced plans for the back of the new $10 note to feature an image of the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession that passed the steps of the Treasury Department where the allegorical tableaux took place. It is planned also to honor many of the leaders of the suffrage movement, including Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul. The front of the new $10 note is to retain the portrait of Alexander Hamilton. Designs for new $5, $10 and $20 bills were to be unveiled in 2020. Later, it was said that the new note would not be ready for circulation until 2026.

Anti-black racism 
The woman's suffrage movement, led in the nineteenth century by women such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, had its genesis in the abolitionist movement, but by the dawn of the twentieth century, Anthony's goal of universal suffrage was eclipsed by a near-universal racism in the United States. While earlier suffragists had believed the two issues could be linked, the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment and Fifteenth Amendment created a division between African American rights and suffrage for women by prioritizing voting rights for black men over universal suffrage for all men and women. In 1903, the NAWSA officially adopted a platform of states' rights that was intended to mollify and bring Southern U.S. suffrage groups into the fold. The statement's signers included Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt and Anna Howard Shaw.

With the prevalence of segregation throughout the country, and within organizations such as the NAWSA, blacks had formed their own activist groups to fight for their equal rights. Many were college educated and resented their exclusion from political power. The fiftieth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 also fell in 1913, giving them even further incentive to march in the suffrage parade. The members of the Alpha chapter of Delta Sigma Theta sorority asked for a place in the college women's section for the women of Howard.  While there were two letters discussing the matter the letter on February 17, 1913 letter discusses the desire for the women of Howard to be given a desirable place in the march as well as mentions correspondence and requests from Delta Sigma Theta sorority member, leader of the suffrage parade, vice president of the NAWSA, and appointer of both Paul & Burns as the organizer of the parade, Jane Addams.  These letters were follow up discussions to the one began by Paul and initiated by Elise Hill when Hill went down to Howard University at the request of Paul to recruit the Howard women. The Howard University group included "Artist, one—Mrs. May Howard Jack son; college women, six—Mrs. Mary Church  Terrell, Mrs. Daniel Murray, Miss Georgia Simpson, Miss Charlotte Steward, Miss Harriet Shadd, Miss Bertha McNiel; teacher,  one—Miss Caddie Park; musician, one—  Mrs. Harriett G. Marshall; professional  women, two— Dr. Amanda V. Gray, Dr. Eva  Ross. Illinois delegation—Mrs. Ida Wells  Barnett; Michigan—Mrs. McCoy, of Detroit,  who carried the banner; Howard University, group of twenty-five girls in caps and gowns;  home makers—Mrs. Duffield, who carried  New York banner, Mrs. M. D. Butler, Mrs.  Carrie W. Clifford."  One trained nurse, whose name could not  be ascertained, marched, and a child caregiver was brought down by the Delaware delegation.

But the Virginia-born Gardener tried to persuade Paul that including blacks would be a bad idea because the Southern delegations were threatening to pull out of the march. Paul had attempted to keep news about black marchers out of the press, but when the Howard group announced they intended to participate, the public became aware of the conflict. A newspaper account indicated that Paul told some black suffragists that the NAWSA believed in equal rights for "colored women", but that some Southern women were likely to object to their presence. A source in the organization insisted that the official stance was to "permit negroes to march if they cared to". In a 1974 oral history interview, Paul recalled the "hurdle" of Terrell's plan to march, which upset the Southern delegations. She said the situation was resolved when a Quaker leading the men's section proposed the men march between the Southern groups and the Howard University group.

While in Paul's memory, a compromise was reached to order the parade as southern women, then the men's section, and finally the black women's section, reports in the NAACP paper, The Crisis, depict events unfolding quite differently, with black women protesting the plan to segregate them. What is clear is that some groups attempted, on the day of the parade, to segregate their delegations. For example, a last-minute instruction by the chair of the state delegation section, Genevieve Stone, caused additional uproar when she asked the Illinois delegation's sole black member, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, to march with the segregated black group at the back of the parade. Some historians claim Paul made the request, though this seems unlikely after the official NAWSA decision. Wells-Barnett eventually rejoined the Illinois delegation as the procession moved down the avenue. In the end, black women marched in several state delegations, including New York and Michigan. Some joined in with their co-workers in the professional groups. There were also black men driving many of the floats. The spectators did not treat the black participants any differently. The ladies of Delta Sigma Theta sorority were placed at the very end of the parade.

See also
List of suffragists and suffragettes
Mud March (suffragists), a 1907 suffrage procession in the U.K.
Silent Sentinels
Suffrage Hikes
Timeline of women's suffrage
Timeline of women's suffrage in the United States
Women's Coronation Procession, a 1911 U.K. suffrage march
Women's Sunday, a 1908 U.K. suffrage march and rally

Notes

References
Adams, Katherine H. and Michael L. Keene (2008). Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Adams, Mildred (1967). The Right to Be People. Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincot Co. 
Brown, Harriet Connor, ed., "Official Program, Woman Suffrage Procession, Washington, D. C., March 3, 1913" (Washington, 1913), Library of Congress. 
Flexner, Eleanor (1959). Century of Struggle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kraditor, Aileen S. (1965). The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement 1890-1920. New York and London: Columbia University Press.

Stevens, Doris (1920). Jailed for Freedom. New York: Boni and Liveright.
Wheeler, Marjorie Spruill, ed. (1995). One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement. Troutdale, OR: NewSage Press. .
Zahniser, J. D. and Amelia R. Fry (2014). Alice Paul: Claiming Power. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. .

External links

 The 1913 Women's Suffrage Parade by Alan Taylor in the March 1, 2013 edition of Atlantic magazine

Women's suffrage in the United States
1913 in the United States
Parades in the United States
1913 in Washington, D.C.
Protest marches in Washington, D.C.
Progressive Era in the United States
Alice Paul
March 1913 events in the United States
1913 in women's history
Women in Washington, D.C.