Alice Paul and the
Triumph of Militancy

Linda G. Ford

One Woman, One Vote (1995) is an anthology of writings on the woman suffrage movement, edited by Marjorie Spruill Wheeler. It has everything from Linda Kerber on women’s original exclusion from the Constitution, to Rosalyn Terborg-Penn on African-American women and the vote, to Nancy Cott on what happens after1920. It also has a piece by me, "Alice Paul and the Triumph of Militancy." The article traces the evolution of the militantly feminist policy of Alice Paul, the leader and inspiration of the National Woman’s Party. She started out as a graduate student in London observing and then participating in the heady and dangerous demonstrations of the radical British suffrage group, the Women’s Social and Political Union . Paul eventually brought the WSPU’s militant philosophy of "deeds not words" to the American woman suffrage fight, but her initial optimism about the reasonableness of the progressive American male would change as she was first ignored, then shoved around, and finally put in an insane ward and forced fed through the nose. In the end, she was vindicated because the NWP’s militancy definitely helped force the Wilson government’s hand and won women the vote.

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