Alice Paul Suffrage

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Pages: 9

At the turn of the 20th century, the struggle for suffrage, or a woman’s right to vote, in the United States gained momentum, fueled by the relentless determination of courageous activists like Alice Paul. Born into a Quaker family in 1885, Paul grew up attending her mother’s suffragists’ meetings (“Dr. Alice Paul. From the beginning, she sought an exceptionally advanced level of education and graduated from Swarthmore College in 1905. From there, she spent a year studying social work. She later obtained a master's degree in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania and became interested in the unfair challenges faced by women that were imposed in the Constitution. She then earned a Ph.D. in 1912 from the University of Pennsylvania with a …show more content…
During her studies at the University of Birmingham, she witnessed Christabel Pankhurst, daughter of famous British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst, being prevented from addressing a university audience about suffrage by a hostile crowd. This was Paul’s first encounter witnessing another’s direct opposition to suffrage, which shocked her and led to radicalizing her beliefs. In 1908, Paul was invited to become a caseworker in Dalston for the Charity Society of London and attended her first suffrage parade. For the next two years, she worked closely with the Women's Social and Political Union, participating in more militant strategies of British feminism such as demonstrations, imprisonment, and hunger strikes. After a brief imprisonment at Halloway Prison, Paul returned to America. She resumed her studies at the University of Pennsylvania in 1910, but now with a new goal: to change the legal status of women (“Alice Paul”). With a more mature attitude, she quickly became frustrated with the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s, or NAWSA’s, cautious