Alice Paul and the Fight for Women's Rights: From the Vote to the Equal Rights Amendment

by Deborah Kops

Here is the story of leader Alice Paul, from the women's suffrage movement—the long struggle for votes for women—to the “second wave,” when women demanded full equality with men. Paul made a significant impact on both. She reignited the sleepy suffrage moment with dramatic demonstrations and provocative banners. After women won the right to vote in 1920, Paul wrote the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which would make all the laws that discriminated against women unconstitutional. Passage of the ERA became the rallying cry of a new movement of young women in the 1960s and ’70s. Paul saw another chance to advance women’s rights when the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 began moving through Congress. She set in motion the “sex amendment,” which remains a crucial legal tool for helping women fight discrimination in the workplace. Includes archival images, author’s note, bibliography, and source notes.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, History, Feminism, Biography Memoir, Womens, Politics

216 pages, Hardcover

First published February 28, 2017

About the author

I've written more than 20 books for kids, including The Great Molasses Flood: Boston, 1919 (Charlesbridge, 2012)

Reviews

[Leslie Goddard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This books fills a much-needed place in the middle-school literature on Alice Paul, although in truth I'd easily recommend this book to adults as well. Paul's name is shockingly unknown to most Americans, so it fills a niche right there. But she's also a somewhat difficult person to write about, since so little is known of her personal life. She was notoriously secretive about her private life, leaving biographers mostly to focus on her public life (as she undoubtedly intended). Dobs does a nice job providing just the right amount of information -- enough to be thorough without getting bogged down in details. Paul emerges as a determined, fearless, single-minded reformer not afraid to speak her mind and stand up to authority, even when doing so was wildly unpopular. It's an easy read and should have little difficulty becoming the standard book on Paul for this age group. At a time when many students are wondering how to work for political change, Paul's life provides an inspirational study of leadership and how change can happen even in the face of intense opposition.

[Mrs. Melaugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite plenty of middle school appropriate sources for suffragettes Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, their sister activist, Alice Paul, seems to have garnered much less press. How fortuitous that this book has come along to admirably fill that gap. Starting with Paul’s birth in New Jersey in 1885, through her arrests and hunger strikes in both Britain and the US, and her efforts to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, Paul’s accomplishments are revealed. Extensively detailed end notes include a Who’s Who of women’s rights activists, an author’s note that explains how she came to care so much about her topic, twelve pages of chapter-by-chapter source notes, and a seven page annotated bibliography as well as a thorough index and picture credits. If only all writers of non-fiction would follow Kops’ fine example!

[Richie Partington · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richie’s Picks: ALICE PAUL AND THE FIGHT FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS: FROM THE VOTE TO THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT by Deborah Kops, Calkins Creek, February 2017, 216p., ISBN: 978-1-62979-323-8

“A good man pays his debt
But you ain’t paid yours yet
Even it
Even it up”
-- Heart (1980)

“Yesterday, after reading the news, my daughter asked me a question. “Mom, is it true that there are biological reasons why there are fewer women in tech and leadership?”
That question, whether it’s been asked outright, whispered quietly, or simply lingered in the back of someone’s mind, has weighed heavily on me throughout my career in technology. Though I’ve been lucky to work at a company where I’ve received a lot of support...my experience in the tech industry has shown me just how pervasive that question is.
Time and again, I’ve faced the slights that come with that question. I’ve had my abilities and commitment to my job questioned. I’ve been left out of key industry events and social gatherings. I’ve had meetings with external leaders where they primarily addressed the more junior male colleagues. I’ve had my comments frequently interrupted and my ideas ignored until they were rephrased by men. No matter how often this all happened, it still hurt.
So when I saw the memo that circulated last week, I once again felt that pain, and empathized with the pain it must have caused others. I thought about the women at Google who are now facing a very public discussion about their abilities, sparked by one of their own co-workers. I thought about the women throughout the tech field who are already dealing with the implicit biases that haunt our industry (which I’ve written about before), now confronting them explicitly. I thought about how the gender gap persists in tech despite declining in other STEM fields, how hard we’ve been working as an industry to reverse that trend, and how this was yet another discouraging signal to young women who aspire to study computer science. And as my child asked me the question I’d long sought to overcome in my own life, I thought about how tragic it was that this unfounded bias was now being exposed to a new generation.”
-- Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube 8/8/17
Alice Paul in 1909, at age 24:
“At the jail, Alice Paul and Amelia Brown went through the usual drill: they demanded first-division status [like political prisoners and those who had committed minor offenses], were refused, and went on a hunger strike. But the prison rules had changed, and Paul knew she would not be leaving anytime soon. Instead of releasing suffragettes on hunger strikes for medical reasons, the prison now force-fed them.
On the third day, Paul experienced the ordeal that she had been dreading: Prison matrons wrapped her in a blanket and put her in a chair. A doctor inserted a long tube through one of her nostrils into her stomach and poured milk and liquid food down the tube. ‘When it was over I was trembling from head to foot from shock, was covered with perspiration, felt sick at the stomach & my nose bled for about ten minutes,’ Paul wrote her mother. She was fed twice each day until she served her entire one-month sentence. Because Paul resisted, she was restrained by sheets tied around her and by three matrons, one of whom sat astride her knees. It usually took about three tries before the doctor got the tube all the way down to her stomach.”

Alice Paul in 1963, at age 78:
“A civil rights bill, which had stalled in the House of Representatives for months, seemed likely to get moving again after President Lyndon Johnson’s passionate speech in support of the bill. He had been sworn into office only five days earlier, on November 22, the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. And he was making the passage of this bill a priority.
The bill would make racial segregation illegal in public places such as restaurants, hotels, theaters, public libraries, and public schools. And under one heading, Title VII, the bill prohibited employees from discriminating against anyone because of his or her ‘race, color, religion, or national origin.’ Why not, Alice Paul thought, add another word to that clause: sex. That way, all women would be protected against discrimination in the workplace.
‘A great many of our members felt, ‘Well, you mustn’t take up these side things so often,’ Paul remembered. ‘But I felt this we must take up, absolutely must take up.’ She had never demonstrated support for or opposition to civil rights. Paul was an opportunist, a quality that troubled some of her admirers. She saw nothing wrong with taking advantage of the wave of support for African Americans to further the cause to which she had dedicated her life: equal rights for women.”

Back in the Sixties, our teachers were always instructing us to read the newspaper every day. I became a dedicated and thorough reader of Long Island’s Newsday, and I remember perusing the Help Wanted advertisements. At the time, they consisted of two sections: jobs for men and jobs for women. Suddenly, in the mid-Sixties, help wanted ad segregation ended. Now I know why that transformation took place.

As a young woman who raised hell and got force-fed in jail while still fresh out of college, Alice Paul played a pivotal role in passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Women got the right to vote.

As an old lady, still driven to even it up, Alice Paul played a pivotal role in the insertion of the “sex amendment” into the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This led to the creation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commision (EEOC) and the end of segregated Help Wanted sections. Just a few years before Susan Wojcicki was born, women won the right to be treated equally in the workplace.

Alice Paul’s opportunism, determination, and single-mindedness makes her an interesting historical figure. She was a petite Quaker woman who didn’t think twice about heaving rocks through Parliamentary windows and suffering the consequences if it succeeded in bringing attention to her cause, justice for women.

In ALICE PAUL AND THE FIGHT FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS, Author Deborah Kop presents a well-written, well-sourced biography of this champion of women’s rights.

I was astonished to learn that Alice Paul was the one to write the proposed text for the Equal Rights Amendment--back in 1923! As the author explains, despite the failure to gain ratification of the ERA, the work Alice Paul did to get the “sex amendment” included in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, coupled with enactment of Title IX a decade later, have led to such advances for women that, on a practical level, the ERA is no longer needed.

Not that the playing field has yet been evened up. Women are still paid less than men, and underrepresented at the top, everywhere from corporate executive suites and boardrooms to the U.S. Congress. I hope that some young people who read about Alice Paul and who love and respect their mothers and sisters, will be inspired to raise hell and move up further in the right direction.

Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.pbworks.com
https://www.facebook.com/richiespicks/
richiepartington@gmail.com

[Brandi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was totally in the dark about Alice Paul. I knew she had something to do with women’s rights, but I don’t remember ever learning about her. This is a travesty. She spent the majority of the 20th century fighting for equal rights for women - enduring multiple arrests, hunger strikes in jail, and countless marches and lobbying and protests. She drafted the Equal Rights Amendment. She was local to me (another upsetting reason we didn’t learn about her in school), she never married, and she lived to be 92. She was a badass, and I should have known more about her when I was growing up. All women should. We deserve to know on whose shoulders we stand. Just as she took up the mantle from Susan B. Anthony and her contemporaries (who got slight attention in my history classes), today’s feminists owe a lot to Alice Paul and co.

I am so glad I found this book!

Deborah Kops does a great job balancing the story of Alice’s personal life with the larger battles for suffrage and equal rights. She covers Paul’s colleagues in the National Women’s Party and the party’s various initiatives in a way that’s detailed but not too dense. I also loved all of the photos she includes. They really made the history come alive.

[Tara · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good overview of the feminist leader, Alice Paul, and her work on improving women's lives. Its part biography, but mainly a history of Paul's role in the women's rights movement. I appreciated the detail and the stories, as well as the author's decision to tell the story from beginning to end. There are some good notes at the end of the book, too. This would be a good choice for young adults looking for an interesting American biography.

[Jennifer Mangler · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's so great to see a YA book about Alice Paul. Her work has influenced all of our lives in profound ways, and yet most people have never heard of her. Kops does a terrific job of showing just how much work suffragists did, and how much they sacrificed, to earn women the right to vote. Too many of us take that right for granted.

[Nann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written for YAs but equally good for adults. Alice Paul was a radical suffragist who never stopped advocating for women's rights.

[Thomas Ray]

Columnist Mike Royko knew how to pass the Equal Rights Amendment: https://chicago.suntimes.com/2018/10/...

Novelist Evangeline Walton knew why we need it: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

We've all heard of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Emmeline Pankhurst and their efforts on behalf of suffrage for women. But in the rush to cover all the topics in the history curriculum standards, they may be the only figures that are introduced in class. The new biography of Alice Paul will expand library collections and offer those interested in the suffragettes a new heroine to learn about. From her first introduction to the topic in a lecture by Christabel Pankhurst, to details on the hunger strikes and other tactics Miss Paul used to gain attention and support for the cause, the details of her years leading the fight for woman suffrage are a fascinating tale. Reading of the infighting and friction between Paul and the National American Woman Suffrage Association and between the NAWSA and the National Woman's Party is a big surprise. It seems so strange that the two groups wanted the same results, but couldn't cooperate with each other.

Anyone interested in the work that went into the national right to vote for women and how that crusade also fed into the push for the Equal Rights Amendment, should read this book. Paul was a determined, tenacious, and intelligent adversary to those who opposed her goals. Delving into all the obstacles she conquered, the hardships she endured, and the solutions she devised, will impress readers and earn their respect.

I received an advance copy for review purposes from the publisher.

[Noelle Boc · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent piece of non-fiction for middle graders on both women's rights and the non stop activist, Alice Paul. I knew very little about Paul before I read this book. I came away amazed at her lifelong pursuit of achieving equal rights for women both in America and internationally. Her tireless work gave women in this country the rights they have today, and as one person stated, every time she walked into a voting booth, she thanked Alice Paul. One of the best things about this book is that it goes far beyond the period when women won the vote with the 19th Amendment. Instead, it follows Paul as she became the architect behind adding the term "sex" to Title VII of the civil rights bill in the 1960s, guaranteeing equal treatment throughout the country for all regardless of race, color, religion, national origin...or sex. With a current political situation that is causing tension around women's rights, there has never been a better time for everyone to brush up on their history of how and when those rights were first won for American women. A well written and researched book that will be easily read and digested by anyone who picks it up. From now on, I shall be one of those women who says, "Thank you, Alice Paul!"

[Heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this nonfiction account of Alice Paul's work on behalf of women's rights. What a determined woman she was, and what a lot of good she did. Whether one agrees with her methods or not, one has to admit that Paul left her mark on the work. She never gave up fighting for rights she believed women should have. And while not always successful, her efforts shouldn't be forgotten. I thought it was interesting how the author turned what was originally intended to be a biography into an historical account of the women's rights movement. As she pointed out, it's hard to right a biography when the chosen individual has gone out of her way to avoid talking about her own thoughts and feelings.

Alice Paul was clearly a woman of great courage and conviction, but little is known about her personal life, other than what she shared in letters with loved ones and those are few and far between. It's clear though that the author did her research. This account is not only well-written, but thorough. I learned a lot about the history of the women's rights movement, including many things I did not know. And after all is said and done, that is the purpose for a narrative nonfiction book like this: to tell a story as accurately and interestingly as possible.

[Cindy Mitchell *Kiss the Book* · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kops, Deborah Alice Paul and the Fight for Women's Rights, 208 pages. NON-FICTION. Calkins Creek (Highlights), 2017. $17.95.

Alice Paul was one of the great leaders of the Women's Rights movement in America. A Quaker by birth, Paul became interested in the suffragette movement while studying in Great Britain, and eventually returned home to America to become fully involved in the work here. Even after American women gained the right to vote, Paul continued to mobilize for equal rights for the remainder of her life.

This is a great nonfiction biography of an American hero many have never heard of or at least know little about. In addition to detailing Paul's life, Kops does a wonderful job of telling the story of the Women's movement in the 20th century--its highs and its lows--without getting too caught up in the dramatic. This is a solid choice for secondary school libraries to have on hand for student research.

MS, HS--ADVISABLE. Reviewer: TC
https://kissthebook.blogspot.com/2018...

[Fred · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent biography of a woman about whom I knew nothing. It turns out that Alice Paul was the driving force behind the constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote; and she is the author of the text for the Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed in the 1920s and later resurrected, and defeated, sadly, in the 1970's. A tireless worker, propagandist, advocate, agitator, her story was also told in the movie Iron Jawed Angels, which I now have to watch again!

The only quibble I have is the author's assertion that Ms Paul was responsible for Representative Smith of Virginia adding the words "or sex" to the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. No other account I have read mentions this, nor the author's claim that Representative Smith took his language seriously, and not as an attempt to derail the legislation.

That said, I highly recommend this book.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

A real eye opener. Learned there was more to suffarege than I first believed. Young women today have no clue about what these women went through to earn us not only the vote but equal rights. The fight to get woman the vote dates back to 1848 & the ERA was not ratified until 1972. The NOW movement as well as the EEOC laws had a huge impact on the passing of the ERA. Alice Paul,as well as other factual books on the Suffragettes should be read by every young woman coming up today. As we all know,the fight for true equality is an ongoing fight,still in the 21st century! Thank you Alice Paul & all the brave woman for giving us our proper place in society.

[Anne Bennett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew there were a lot of women who made it possible for women to finally win the right to vote, but I had never heard of Alice Paul before, and now I know that the vote for women was in large part because of her. This book opened my eyes.

It is well-written, too, which is always a bonus. It has an excellent bibliography and pages upon pages of source notes. These lend even more credibility to this book as a useful tool for young researchers.

My library says this book is for Juniors or middle grade readers. I disagree. I think the interest level is high school or above.

[MaureenMcBooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

This quick-read biography helped me understand the hunger strikes and picketing scenes from a recent documentary film about WWI and Woodrow Wilson. I knew little about Paul, in spite of her impact on the women's movement. This gave me new appreciation for her and a better understanding of the political forces inside and outside the women's movement in the early fight for women's rights, and how they echoed even into the movement in my day. Indefatigable and uncompromising, Paul proves the saying, "Well-behaved women rarely make history."

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned some things I didn't know here. First of all, I really feel like Alice Paul's name gets lost among all the other women's rights pioneers (Carrie Chapman Catt, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton etc.). I knew about the practice of force-feeding suffragettes on hunger strikes, but the Night of Terror was new information. This was maybe not the best read, but it did make me want to learn more.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important book that fills an empty space in many collections - feminist history in YA. Alice Paul and her fellow activists' stories were riveting and eye-opening - so much history that I was unaware of and the book impelled me to appreciate the movement that much more.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of good information. Concise, but still an interesting narrative. Doesn't shy away from pointing out that Alice Paul was hardcore about women's rights but incredibly wishy washy, if not just silent, about rights for African American women.

[Edward Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reviewed for professional publication.

[Cori Arnold · Rating 5 out of 5]

A most excellent detailed summary of events! Pulling so much detail for my project!

[Carol Duncan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book inspiring and educational. I was not aware that the Equal Rights Amendment was not ratified. I am definitely purchasing this book for the middle school library.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and contained a lot of good information. I thought the story dragged a bit in a couple of places, but overall, a good book.

[Patricia Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

clear, well-documented, well researched.

[Lizzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good biography which sheds some much-needed light on Alice Paul's younger years, the roots which led her to suffrage. Written for a YA audience.

[Catherine Yezak · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good reference book. I am not sure how many teens would read it.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fresh off of viewing Iron-Jawed Angels, I wanted to learn more about Alice Paul. She was a single-minded woman, utterly determined to bring about equality for women. Her Quaker background, time spent with the Pankhursts, and deep education combined to make her a nearly unstoppable force. And she just never quit. It was especially moving to read about her this week since Virginia just became the final state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, which was first introduced in 1923. The author’s note was a nice addition, and described a little about her research and how difficult Alice Paul was to examine on a personal level.


Notes and highlights:

One of the things that surprised me was how intertwined the suffrage movement was with WWI and international relations. I don’t remember learning about those two things together, and yet they are inextricably intertwined.

I found this bit especially aggravating, regarding the fight for the final state ratification of the 19th Amendment:
“In addition to all the suffragists who came to Nashville to campaign or witness history or both, antisuffragists arrived in droves. Many of them had a financial stake in keeping American women from voting: The lobbyists representing cotton mill owners were afraid future women voters would want to outlaw child labor or would insist that women mill workers get paid better. The railroad men wanted to keep women from trying to clean up one of the most corrupt industries in the country—theirs. And then there was the liquor lobby, which desperately wanted to get rid of Prohibition laws. Since January, it was illegal to buy or sell alcoholic drinks in the United States. Because more women than men favored Prohibition,* the industry decided that giving women the ballot was not going to help their cause.” (62%)
The United States has historically suffered from an utter lack of economic imagination, which imprisons us in the wicked and terrible systems we build for ourselves. From slavery to denying citizens the vote to our piss-poor healthcare system to woefully inept immigration laws, the specter of economic collapse is repeatedly used to stop any political will in its tracks. Never mind that these broken systems cost lives and utterly degrade the quality of our country.

*Also, I remember reading somewhere, perhaps in jest but I don’t think so, that women supported prohibition because it was easier to change the constitution than to find a way to prevent husbands from boozing and then committing domestic violence.

[Charity · Rating 4 out of 5]

1992, high school gym class baseball. The teacher divided the class by sex then had the girls play on a muddy, disused soccer practice field with aluminum bats and rubber balls while he coached the boys up on the baseball practice field with real equipment. Two girls and I complained to the principal, who suggested that maybe the gym teacher was just "trying to keep the girls safe." Next class, girls were given the option to play with the boys, which wasn't what we wanted...we wanted to use the good equipment and the good field like the boys did, or at least trade off. One friend and I did go play with the boys on principle, even though it was incredibly embarrassing. It would have been so much better if the rest of the girls had gone with us, and I never got why they didn't. This biography of Alice Paul helps me understand a little of how some of those girls might have been thinking.

Not that I'm remotely like Alice Paul except in the sense that I'm argumentative and difficult to get along with, but I can relate to her frustration a little bit, I think.

At any rate, this is an interesting, fairly in-depth biography of Paul and history of the 20th-century women's rights movement in the United States. The author mentions Paul's failure to include Black women in the movement for fear of alienating white Southern women, but I think Kops could have done a little more (or a lot more) to explain some of the history and ramifications of that failure. Some of the post-1920s struggles were also a little difficult to follow. Overall, though, a decent biography for young readers.

[NancyJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alice Paul isn’t as famous as earlier suffragettes, but she was the one who led a successful campaign to pass the 19th Amendment to the constitution, giving women the right to vote 100 years ago, in 1920. She also helped to get “sex” added to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A legislator laughingly added it to the bill covering race, religion, and national origin, as a way to ensure the bill wouldn’t pass. He later claimed it was sincere, but I always loved the anecdote. That bill provided more legal rights for women than any other single piece of legislation. Though Title 9, requiring equal access (and funding) to sports opportunities, has changed the lives of many girls and young women.

This book provides an overview of her tireless efforts to gain the support of the press and the president. She was a Quaker who believed in non violent protests. She was jailed several times for picketing, and went on hunger strikes, seriously jeopardizing her health. Alice inspired volunteers all over the country to work toward the cause. This is a quick read for YA readers, or anyone who wants to know the basics. Other books may provide more details about her life, or a greater understanding of how to influence social change

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved learning about Alice Paul and everything she was involved in, but man, this book was really dry at times. Sometimes I was asking myself "Could we just leave this part out?" because it felt a little boring.
I did feel like I learned a lot though. Like, Amelia Earhart being part of the National Woman's Party - didn't know that. Or about there not being any statues of women in the rotunda until the monument created by Adelaide Johnson was moved to the rotunda in 1997 (76 years after it was gifted to Congress). I feel like this is a lot of the information the US doesn't talk about in schools. I didn't learn about suffragettes until I was in college! All I learned in middle/high school was when women were provided their right to vote and that sex is a protected class under the ERA. That isn't enough in my opinion. Young adults should know the names of Alic Paul, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Burns, Ida B Wells, and Jeannette Rankin.