Alice Paul
Paul’s upbringing as a Quaker provided her with early exposure to ideas of social justice, and her mother was an active suffragist who occasionally brought her young daughter to meetings of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). While studying abroad at the London School of Economics, Paul became heavily involved with the militant suffragists of the WSPU, and when she returned to America she applied her experiences to the struggle for suffrage through NAWSA. Disagreements with NAWSA leadership over these new, more radical tactics led to a split in the organization, ultimately leading to the formation of the National Women’s Party (NWP), with Alice Paul at its head. Through the combined efforts of NAWSA, NWP, and a host of other women’s organizations, the 19th amendment was passed in 1920.
Having gained the right to vote, Alice Paul set her sights on the many specific legal disabilities that women faced across the US. Around the end of spring 1921, she and the rest of the NWP leadership came to believe that a federal amendment was needed to guarantee equal rights for men and women across the country. Paul took on a leading role in the drafting process, which occurred over the following two years. She tried to drum up support for the ERA in all sorts of ways in the subsequent decades, and when she once again took the lead in authoring the 1943 revisions, some began to nickname it the “Alice Paul Amendment” in recognition of her importance in the ERA’s history.
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