The American women’s suffrage movement has always been identified with its two founders, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, who defined it by their strong, enthusiastic leadership. When they retired from active participation in the cause, the loss of that personal connection naturally affected the movement’s future. The transition was not an easy one. As the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), the organization that Stanton and Anthony had led, headed into the twentieth century, it lost the dynamism and direction of the nineteenth-century association. Successors had difficulty measuring up to Stanton and Anthony, and the organization was unable to develop a focused plan to guide its difficult campaign.

The answer to that question is not obvious: Almost anyone familiar with the suffrage movement has a picture of the kind of leadership Stanton and Anthony exercised, but most people know far less about Alice Paul, whose contributions are not prominently featured in the movement’s history. Investigation into Paul’s life and contributions reveals that she had a very different approach to the twentieth-century battle for the vote, that she was a radical by the standards of the NAWSA leaders who succeeded Stanton and Anthony, and that she devoted her life first to winning the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment and later to the effort to secure the enactment of the Equal Rights Amendment. For these reasons, any history of the women’s suffrage movement that fails to take account of Alice Paul and her organization, the NWP, is incomplete.

Using the classroom as an historical laboratory, students can use primary and secondary sources to research the history of Alice Paul, her associates, and the NWP. The students can be historians; they can discover the history of Alice Paul and her fight for women’s suffrage.

Objectives:

1. Students will be able to create a model to be used to evaluate the validity of historical evidence.

2. Students will examine primary documents and factual references to analyze the history of the suffrage movement through the life and work of Alice Paul.

3. Students will be able to identify the strategies of both the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the National Woman’s Party.

4. Students will be engaged in historical research and critical analysis. They will be able to consider the historical context of the suffrage movement.

5. Students will be able to examine how the U.S. entry into World War I affected the campaign for women’s suffrage.

Lesson: Writing the history of Alice Paul and the NWP

Activity One: Write the biography of Alice Paul

Divide the class into small groups. Assign each group one aspect of Paul’s life and work to research for the biography:

a. birth through her departure to England
b. work with the suffragists in England
c. NAWSA and the Congressional Union
d. the Congressional Union and the NWP
e. Equal Rights Amendment
f. historical context of Paul’s life and work

When considering how to write the biography of Alice Paul, students should think about:

a. the importance of the era in which Paul lived
b. the impact of the major events of the first half of the twentieth century on the women’s movement
c. the extent to which Paul’s work for women and the institutions with which she was associated (NAWSA, the Congressional Union – the NAWSA subcommittee that Paul helped to lead before she formed the NWP-- and the NWP itself) defined her life

The following websites provide biographical and other useful information:

http://www.alicepaul.org/alicepaul.htm
http://pbskids.org/wayback/civilrights/features_suffrage.html
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/suffrage1900/
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/browse/ (Browse for Alice Paul, her associates, the NWP, and other relevant topics.)
http://www.hbo.com/films/ironjawedangels/cast/characters/alicepaul.html (This website for the HBO movie, Iron Jawed Angels, about the struggle of Alice Paul and Lucy Burns to secure the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, includes a transcript of the movie.)
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/aw01e/aw01e.html (campaign)
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awmss5/suffrage_orgs.html (a general website on American women with links to other sources)
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awmss5/final_push.html (a website focusing on the last stages of the suffrage campaign with links to other sources)
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/mcchtml/womhm.html
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/vfwhtml/vfwhome.html
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/naw/nawstime.html (timeline that gives an overview of the women’s suffrage movement)

Students should look at the close associates of Alice Paul: the Pankhursts (from England), Lucy Burns, Chrystal Eastman, Inez Milholland (Boisevain), and the leaders of NAWSA.

Books: Eleanor Flexner. Century of Struggle
Aileen Kraditor. The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement
Christine Lunardini. From Equal Suffrage to Equal Rights

1. Using the same groups and group-research approach, have the class select the appropriate information for this expanded coverage of the campaign for woman’s suffrage.
2. Include visual representations--photographs and posters.

1. NAWSA’s support of Woodrow Wilson
2. NAWSA’s “Winning Plan”
3. NWP’s focus solely on a federal amendment for women’s suffrage
4. NWP’s decision to picket the White House

Have each group share its research on the assigned topic with the class.