Five Days to Go: Alice Paul

Today, we pay tribute to Alice Paul and the courageous activists who led the women's suffrage movement of the early 20th century that secured the right to vote for women. Paul (who held doctorates in political science and civil law) formed a succession of suffrage organizations to rally support for women's rights and convince the federal government to pass a constitutional amendment for women's suffrage.

In the course of this struggle, Paul and her fellow activists endured physicial assaults, imprisonment, torture and continuous harassment. Undaunted, these "iron-jawed angels" persisted until Woodrow Wilson announced, in 1918, the urgent need for women's suffrage as a "war measure". Two years later, by the margin of one vote in Tennessee, the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution was passed and women were finally able to participate in the electoral process.

All power to the people