Biography
Alice Paul Founder of the National Woman's Party and chief strategist of the militant U.S. suffrage movement. A Hicksite Quaker from Mount Laurel, New Jersey; PhD in economics (Penn 1912); apprenticed in militant tactics with Emmeline Pankhurst's WSPU in Britain. Beginning January 10, 1917, organized the "Silent Sentinels" picketing. After Oct 20, 1917 arrest, sentenced to seven months and led hunger strikes at the District Jail; authorities transferred her to a psychiatric ward and force-fed her raw eggs through a feeding tube three times daily. Authored the original Equal Rights Amendment in 1923. Alice Paul was a very prominent suffragette. She was arrested many times for protesting among other things, and she (along with other early suffragettes) frequently went on hunger strike to protest poor prison conditions. In the late 1910s, when Alice Paul went on hunger strike during her seven-month sentence, she was moved to the prison's psychiatric ward and force-fed raw eggs through a tube shoved into her mouth.