← The History Chicks : A Women's History Podcast
The History Chicks : A Women's History Podcast
Alice Paul Part 1
02:00:41
Alice Paul was one of the most prominent activists of the 20th century women's rights movement, who believed that moral authority always trumps the letter of the law; injustices must be called out and resisted as a matter of principle. By hook or by crook; with personal sacrifice. determination, and a talent for spectacle, she moved the needle of public opinion though acts of resistance.
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Host 1
Welcome to the History tricks where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental.
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Host 2
And here's your 30 second summary. Alice Paul was one of the most prominent activists of the 20th century Women's rights movement who believed that moral authority always trumps the letter of the law. Injustices must be called out and resisted as a matter of principle. By hook or by crook. With personal sacrifice, determination and a talent for spectacle, she moved the needle of public opinion through acts of resistance. The end. A quick little ears warning before we begin in section four way way into the show, we do describe the practice of force feeding. You may want to decide for yourself whether or not you wish to hear about it. I will give you a heads up right before we talk about it. And now without further ado, on with the show. Alice Stokes Paul was born on January 11, 1885 in Mount Laurel, New Jersey the oldest of the four children of William Micklepaw II and Tacy Stokes Perry Paul. Both parents were descended from a long line of Quakers. This is a religion that really emphasizes individual conscience rather than doctrine sacred to the religion. Humility, simplicity and also radically equality among the sexes, especially within marriage.
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Host 1
Ellis's own family went back eight generations in the United States so they are firmly entrenched in the U. S settled all in the area that is now New Jersey.
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Host 2
Quakers have long been on the forefront of societal improvement. From large scale movements like abolition, women's suffrage and civil rights to the founding of educational and charitable institutions to improve the world with your work and with your example. Now Mama's family was quite wealthy maybe because of the Quaker reputation for integrity and they were trusted in business and civic matters and became quite powerful indeed. Mama, the youngest child and only girl in the family, was given a first class education. After high school she attended Swarthmore College, a co ed institution that had been co founded by her own grandfather. Even though she didn't graduate because she left senior year to get married, Mama was Among the elite 2% of American women at the time who attended college.
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Host 1
If you go to the Swarthmore College website now because it is still a school, a chatbot will open up and it's called Lucretia Bot because Lucretia Mott was also one of the founders of the college. I know, I was reading it, I'm like wait, what? I want that funny.
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Host 2
Oh, I was sad for you. I was sad for you because in the hole where we say blah blah blah college and you're like go blah blah blah. Swarthmore didn't have A mascot until like 2021.
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Host 1
I know the team is called the Garnets, but their mascot, the guy in the costume, is Phineas the Penis.
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Host 2
Fair enough.
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Host 1
It's also $90,000 to go there a year. Tuition, room and board.
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Host 2
Elite.
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Host 1
Very.
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Host 2
Even in her youth, Mama went to women's suffrage organization meetings with the full support of first her father and then her husband. Now, I'm not saying she needed that exactly. She did not need permission necessarily, but just as background for the generally egalitarian nature of Alice's upbringing. It was, well, that's what she chooses to do, so she does it type of thing.
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Host 1
Right. The Seneca Falls Women's Rights convention was held 11 years before Tacy was even born. So that's how long women's suffrage had already been on the scene when she was born. It was already a thing in motion.
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Host 2
In contrast to Mama's cushioned youth, Papa got dealt a hard blow at an early age. And someh. I cannot find out how. And I tell you, I resorted to AI to try to dig. I cannot find out how both of his parents died on the very same day when he was only six months old.
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Host 1
Yeah, I did exactly the same thing. I spent. I don't even want to admit how much time I spent trying to figure it out. It's like, why? I mean, maybe it was an accident of some sort, a fire, who knows? It's a big mystery. Her father, William Paul, he was raised by relatives apart from his siblings. They had to split them all up. And when he was a teen, he was a teacher. And he was a teacher in the school that Tacy went to. So they had met when Tacy was younger, but then he ran off to the big city to run a shoe wholesale business and he made some serious money doing that. So he was able to retire to the country at a young age and kind of casually farm and invest in real estate, which he did very, very well at.
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Host 2
So a single man with a good fortune is in want of a wife and he obtained one. I also want to clarify that when he was a teacher at the school he taught in the upper school and she was in the equivalent of fifth grade. So it wasn't weird. They didn't have a thing.
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Host 1
No, no. He's nine years older than hers.
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Host 2
Yes. So they lived in the same town and after she had reached her full mat, they met again and fell in love and got married.
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Host 1
He was 31 when they married and she was 22. Very respectable ages. A couple years after marrying, they purchased a very Large piece of land. Ultimately it would be about 300 acres with a very large two story farmhouse in Moorestown, New Jersey.
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Host 2
The estate was called Paulsdale. Their first child, Alice, was born here two years after their marriage. And over the course of Alice's childhood, the family would add significant acreage to what is called the quote, home farm. As well as three more children. Papa would now found the Morristown national bank and Trust. And they had servants and farm workers and peacocks in the yard like the Malfoys. I why do we have a. They're so mean by the way they used to roam around in our zoo. And they actually had to put a stop to it because they would run at people. I don't think they're afraid of stuff anyway. As the children grew up safe, as far as I can tell from those peacocks, they also had farm work to do, responsibilities to manage and in the line of moral development rather than supporting the family because there was definitely a full staff. But Alice was in charge of the duck eggs, of counting and kind of accounting for the cost and profit of each. That was her specific responsibility when she was a small child.
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Host 1
Another part of their life was what we would call church. They called it meeting. And it isn't actually like a church that we would go to now where there'd be a sermon and singing. It was a time of quiet reflection. They all gathered together in prayer and quiet reflection. In the Quaker Church there were leadership roles for men but not for women. Which is, as far as I can tell, the only moment where there's any segregation of any sort in the Quaker Church. But when they were in their homes, it was an absolute equal partnership between the men and the women.
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Host 2
The Paul children were raised to be responsible, dependable and patient. I think Quaker Meeting helped a lot with that. You were modeled many examples of stoicism and patience that was instilled in you as a value. Later in her life, Alice was complimented on her ability to remain still when she chose to, which was not always, but when she chose to, she could keep it all inside. Well, Papa especially was a parent who expected a lot of his children and mostly with Alice, he got it. He expected them to develop the gifts they were born with, whatever they were, and to use their talents for the greater good. He often complimented his eldest daughter that if there was something to be done, he could always bank on Alice. And I think because of his business, it was a little dad joke because he worked at a bank. A little clumsy, but in the category of dad joke, I think it Works. It kind of works.
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Host 1
And you know, their life wasn't all this going to meeting and doing chores and being stoic. It was a lot of play. And their parents encouraged that. They lived on this huge property. At one point the parents even put in a grass tennis court. There were cousins nearby that they played with.
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Host 2
Quakers put great emphasis on physical fitness but were much more skeptical of music and of art. Quakers equated both music and art with what they saw as the excesses of the Christian churches with their iconography. They wanted to go back to basics and be more minimalistic. In fact, Mama and Papa's generation were still wearing the traditional plain clothes. By Alice's time, modernity had crept in a little bit and a frill, a bow on a hat or a dress was just fine. And art was creeping back in. They started to let the small children draw at the Quaker school. It was like a big scandal. It was a giant leap forward in that Quaker school.
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Host 1
Alice began to attend it at the age of six and again because there is complete equality in this community, boys and girls attended. She went to the Moorestown Friends School which is curiously still open. Go Foxes. It was a private school then and it's a private school now. And it was open to anybody, anybody, Quaker or not, who could pay the dollar and 25 a week tuition, which is about $44 in modern money. Although now it comes to about $875 in modern money to attend that school.
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Host 2
Alice excelled at school despite staggering levels of procrastination. Girl. Same girl I know well also at home. This is something that's very me. Also, the Pauls themselves had an extensive library in their house. Alice in particular took advantage of the free rein toward reading material and voraciously consumed everything in it. The Paul's library was more liberal in its viewpoint toward novels, etc, light reading than even the public library, which she also ran through bragging at one point that she had read every single book in that library. And she may have. I don't know.
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Host 1
I know I. She may have. She said we just read whatever books were there. I just read endlessly, ceaselessly, almost every book it seems.
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Host 2
Everybody knew all you had to do was get Alice or any of these children a book and they would be like super happy.
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Host 1
That's a common thread in our stories, isn't it? That they were allowed to read whatever they wanted.
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Host 2
There's something to be said for not putting limits on what goes in because I think it helps to make the tree to hang future learning on. Well, they were also all of them encouraged to read whatever newspapers came to the house and discuss the events of the day with their parents.
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Host 1
This particular school had a board of Quakers, obviously, who constantly revised the curriculum and that's how they got the art in there. Eventually they paid really close attention. It wasn't like they just made it up and it stuck. By high school, she was studying Latin, French, German, math, science, writing, history and of course, drawing. Thank you very much. In this particular school, it wasn't that you went to the next grade because it was September and you were a year older. It was when you were ready. So she was progressed through the grades fairly quickly.
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Host 2
She also took geography and literature, in fact, joined the Literary Society. She played baseball, basketball. She joined the debate team. And as she got older, Mama took her to suffrage meetings which evidently held no interest for her in a bit of historical irony.
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Host 1
Yeah.
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Host 2
And as a whole, Quakers, I think, and this is a. You know, how many of them can be expected to rise up? I mean, there are a lot of Quakers that were activists, but Quakers have been criticized for holding the egalitarian view and not en masse acting upon it. But, you know, philosophically, Quakers assumed that that outcome was inevitable.
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Host 1
And again, the. The whole thing, you know, with the women's suffrage, they assumed that at some point it was going to happen because they had these. This wonderful community, this society that was extraordinarily equal. So, of course, that everybody else is going to see the wisdom in that. Right, Right.
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Host 2
Let's take a second, if you don't mind, too. I would like to give the highlights, just the highlights of the women's movement so far in the United States of America. Just a quick bullet point. Medium quick.
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Host 1
Sure.
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Host 2
So as far back as before 1776, there were actually a couple of colonies, New Jersey in particular, where Ellis was born, in which women could vote and did vote. In fact, the New Jersey State Constitution said the words he and she may specifically, very egalitarian. Although those rights disappeared by 1807, as one by one the states clarified that they don't in fact, mean women. In 1848, there was the Seneca Falls Convention in New York. Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, et cetera, led discussions. It was the first organized women's suffrage group in America, followed by the National Women's Rights Convention a couple of years after. In 1869, Susan B. Anthony organized the National Women's Suffrage association and Lucy Stone organized the American Women's Suffrage Association. They had started out as one group, and this year there was A schism over the inclusion of civil rights in their platform. One said that we have to focus on suffrage or we are never going to make it. The other group said if we don't include everyone, it's not a real movement. We haven't achieved anything. That was a big fight. That was a big fight. That Same year of 1869 was the year the very first territory, Wyoming, allowed women the vote and Utah followed a year later. This is 1869 and 1870. The Wild west was much more in advance of that. In 1872, Susan B. Anthony was arrested for voting and did not pay her fine. For more on that, go to our Susan B. Anthony episode. In 1878, that same Susan B. Anthony wrote an amendment to the Constitution, now known this is a spoiler as the 19th Amendment question mark. And it says, the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be abridged or denied by the United States or the states by virtue of sex. It was in fact rejected by Congress in 1887. In 1890, Susan B. Anthony gathered all the women's movement together into a new, larger grouping called the nawsa. National American Women's Suffrage Association. We are going to say NASA from now on because that is a mouthful. But just let you know when we say NASA. Indeed, that was the gathering of the disparate women's groups that had splintered off. It was the, the main place where suffrage met and worked and made their moves toward getting women the vote. Colorado gave women the vote in 1893. Idaho gave women the vote again. All this wild west in 1896. And now we have been brought up to where we are in the story, which is of course Alice graduating at 16 in 1901.
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Host 1
She was the valedictorian of her class.
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Host 2
Her speech, her five person class, she had a 20%.
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Host 1
I know, I was gonna say, yeah, it is, it's still an honor. Her, her speech was about our old friend Florence Nightingale. She was still alive at that point. She was 81 years old. But Alice's point of her speech was that we should emulate Florence and disregard class and gender to serve as we all felt led.
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Host 2
Excellent point.
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Host 1
She did receive a scholarship for college for being at the top of her class again of the five. And like her mother, she chose to go to Swarthmore.
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Host 2
That is a very expensive college even then. And the scholarship didn't cover everything. It was 16,000 a year, modern money. I think she got a scholarship for about a quarter of that. Yeah, I, I, I, Parents of departing freshmen Will sympathize with Mama, maybe. Alice was like, thanks for the new clothes. I'm getting on the train. Bye. There was just no looking back.
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Host 1
No, I know. I think she got on with. She got on with a cousin. So she wasn't alone. Alone. But still, it wasn't anything like when I took my kid to college, any of my kids. It was a big production. Swarthmore was of course, because it was a Quaker institution, coeducational, and it had equal number of women and men. It was pretty much one for one. But the powers that be had assured Alice's parents that she would only be allowed to attend, quote, only such social gatherings as were approved by the faculty. And if venturing off campus, she will not be allowed to go to the theater with the young men of the college.
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Host 2
Well, you know, if you've watched Mona Lisa smile, colleges were seen as being. Is it in loco parentis? In loco parentis. For quite a few decades after this, you would give your young women into the care of other responsible adult. And I will say propriety and femininity were both very important to the president of this college. College women, called the quote, new women were often regarded with suspicion. And mathematically they married at a lower percentage than non college educated women. Which was like, you know, the satanic panic of the 1890s. And you know, up till 1910, you know, they wanted to counteract all the criticism of their female students that could come from outside. Alice went against the norm for women students here by not choosing a humanities degree as 90% of women students did, bought a rare science degree. And I love even more the reason that she chose it. And I quote, science is the one thing I don't know anything about and I never would read and I can't understand it or comprehend it or have any interest in it at all. So she chose that as her major. I love it.
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Host 1
I did too. I absolutely, absolutely love that. Alice was not one to just do things moderately. She dove in and had a very, very heavy load of classes. She had biology and chemistry and math, Bible literature, because again, it is a Quaker school. French composition, painting still and elocution. The last two classes were her best. She was best at painting and elocution.
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Host 2
And she hated public speaking. Again, something she didn't like. She thought, well, that's a character flaw. I will correct this by getting really good at elocution.
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Host 1
Right? Yeah. And she's still taking her high school methods of study, that being study a little bit and then slack off. And then just before the Exam cram.
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Host 2
Yikes.
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Host 1
And I'm sure if she is anything like me, as soon as you do that, you're like, I'm never doing this, this again. I'm never doing this again. And then of course you do it again. It's a habit, so you do it again. Yep.
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Host 2
She did say a lot of her tests had been successfully passed by virtue of coffee at 2 in the morning. Well, it wasn't Starbucks. She had to make it, you know, over a candle in her room.
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Host 1
She would fall asleep while she was studying, and her roommate would have to come and wake her up. She'd be sent by the teacher saying, wake her up. And sometimes she would just tell her roommate, tell her that I'm suffering from some disease, and go back to sleep. Like it wasn't urgent for her to wake up and go to this class again. So modern.
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Host 2
Well, her social life got a little out of hand until school tattled on her to her parents about her excess tardies and keeping habitual late hours with ne' er do well prankster punk rockers that went to her school. Papa wrote a very stern letter, what are you thinking? Why are you throwing my, you know, 12,000 a year down the drain type of thing? And so she had to slow her role a little bit. But she did go out for basketball, the tennis team, the rowing team. She went ice skating. All in all, Alice's freshman year was one of social success. Her first foray into the world of dating, which may have included lady persons too. But of all the people in, we really just have nothing with regard to her romantic history. We have a few like, like went walking with so and so because somebody wanted a date for his friend. And that's about it, you know, we don't really have a lot to go on with her. Yeah, romantic life, her whole life.
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Host 1
She did keep a journal, but the only one that survived is her freshman year journal. That's it.
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Host 2
Yeah, period.
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Host 1
That's it. So we do know from that that it did not take her very long to find her, you know, her group, her tribe. In this particular school, this is very different, I think, than anything I've ever heard of before. At their meals, there was a lot of pageantry involved. And they would all go into the dining hall, the entire student body, and they would sit down at the table and the dean would come in and say grace. And then the men would get up and get the food and bring it to the table to serve the women.
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Host 2
I do like it.
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Host 1
Loved that.
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Host 2
That was part of preserving the Femininity of the college students. The, the men were not to think of them as pals. Chivalry was not to be dead. They needed to maintain the outside standards for gentlemanly behavior. I, I think it was just part of that whole like early warning system, like don't make it weird for later.
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Host 1
Yeah, yeah.
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Host 2
Well, she enjoyed freshman year medium academic success, let's just call it.
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Host 1
Yeah, I don't think she passed math.
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Host 2
No. And all in all, though, I think that year was as satisfying as all get out. She did gain without knowing it was a thing. The freshman 15. Yes. I didn't, but I think I had too much nervous energy and it burned off. All those pizza shuttle pizzas at midnight. I loved them so much.
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Host 1
I don't even know what that is.
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Host 2
A shuttle.
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Host 1
Is that the restaurant?
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Host 2
Pizza shuttle was this restaurant and there they still exist. And I have been very careful not to go there because there is no possible way they could keep making them taste the same deliciousness that the illicit in the back door Pizza shuttle deliveries were. You know, that's the thing. They had midnight snack parties in the dorm. Sometimes they'd get out a chafing dish and they'd make a Welsh rarebit, which is basically, you know, cheese fondue on toast. So delicious. Or they would make fudge with ingredients that were like snuck up from the dining hall, you know, cooking it over a gaslight.
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Host 1
Yeah, she did get the freshman. Well, it was wasn't 15, it was 12. But she was very fit. She was playing basketball and tennis as well as learning how to dance. And there was no co ed dancing. It was just same sex dancing. But she loved it. She loved learning all the, all the dances, the waltzes, everything. Loved it.
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Host 2
But then came a grim call from home. Alice was to return home with all possible haste. Papa was ill with pneumonia and it was not looking optimistic that he would survive. Likely before Alice was even able to make it home, it was too late.
- [25:59]
Host 1
And her father did die at the age of 52. It's summertime, officially. I haven't worn jeans in weeks. And for me, my aesthetic is it's shaving season too. So I have been really taking out my flamingo razor. Oh, every other day.
- [26:36]
Host 2
You know what I really like is the light hydrating spray. And for a little touch of bougie ness, I keep it in the refrigerator. So when I come in from outside from my gardening adventures, there it is, ready to go.
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Host 1
Oh, I've been keeping mine just in my bathroom with the air conditioning and it's cool. But and it feels so good when it's nice and cool and you spray it on. But I never thought about the refrigerator. That's brilliant. Brilliant. You know, I have two flamingo razors, and I have two showers that I use in my house. And there's one in each shower, and they come in different colors. I have a rose one in one bathroom and a lilac one in the other. But the flamingo razors, they're really designed for the places that I shave. My legs, my armpit. There's a flexible hinge. It just kind of hugs all my curves. They have a new moisture plus razor that I'm really anxious to try. It combines the razor and. And whatever lotion or soap you would use while you're shaving. It's all in one.
- [27:34]
Host 2
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Host 1
That's shop. Flamingo.com chicks.
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Host 2
Alice had a curious reaction to the death of her father. And I quote, I was too young for my father's death to be much of a blow to me. Life went on just the same. And I wrote seven or maybe eight question marks in my notes.
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Host 1
Yeah, I had that same question. And I wondered if it was because the family kept their grief close and, you know, just kept it within the walls of their community and worked through it in whatever traditions they had. Also, if you are deeply religious, you know that while you're missing your loved one, they are getting their eternal reward, right? So they. They're in a much better place. If you're as religious as these people are, that's what you believe. So I think that that helped give her that. What seems callous to us, but I think it was just comfort.
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Host 2
Well, and youth is selfish. And financially the family was just fine, which was probably the key element. Mama had not been left destitute. In fact, she was left exceptionally solvent.
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Host 1
They didn't live off of his income at the bank. It was all his investment income that made the family so wealthy. And those didn't stop just because his life did. What I also think helped her is because they were such equal partners in their marriage and their relationship. She knew about all of his investments. Right. It Wasn't something new to her. We hear a lot of times, you know, women don't know anything about, you know, their husband's money that they inherited. You know, that's when they lose it. But she knew about it, right?
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Host 2
Right. She was also well advised by male members of her family who did not treat her like a drooping flower, but instead as a partner in the way things would be going forward, both at the bank and on the land. And so, Mama, while this is not great, of course, to lose your husband so early in his life, or your life, she ends up better than most of the widows that we have talked about on our show. For sure.
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Host 1
Yeah.
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Host 2
Definitely after an academically, I think we can call it. Meh. Freshman year, I think she. Gentlemen seed it through there.
- [30:48]
Host 1
Yeah. I think of it as a shakedown cruise.
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Host 2
Right, right.
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Host 1
I mean, I didn't expect anything of my kids for their freshman year other than to pass their classes and not get arrested.
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Host 2
Oh, well, there you go.
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Host 1
It's a really low bar.
- [31:00]
Host 2
Well, sophomore year, it all came back. Alice buckled down to academic achievement over achievement, you might say at one point even switching her goals for a future medical career. She was also, for the first time exposed to the fields of political science and of social work. On a personal note, her friends said that she was too plain spoken. You might not even get a husband, Alice. Maybe I don't want one, she said, breaking the minds of all in sundry. Notable here is her dutiful attendance at a lecture from NASA president Carrie Chapman Catt on the subject of women's suffrage. Alice was only marginally interested in that subject matter. She may have even just gone to be able to write to her mother about it, who was more interested and of course has no idea, because she is not from the future like we are, that the very Mrs. Cat that was up on the stage and giving the speech would one day become her nemesis. Ooh. But you might not even know that till part two. Oh, I know. Well, she and her mama discussed another suffrage group, this one from England that had been making the papers. The Women's Social and Political Union. This was. Whoa. Action. They believed in deeds, not words. And their actions sometimes turned into violent acts. Acts. This group was run by a family led by the Mama Emmeline Pankhurst and three of her daughters. They worked to get suffrage through demonstrations and violations of, quote, propriety, and were often arrested. Wow. This is a radical scenario. Much to be talked of in odd tones.
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Host 1
As far as Alice is concerned, she is thinking, well, maybe I might go into a career in social work. She was really influenced by a couple of her professors. One of them, his name is Jesse Holmes. There's actually a prize named after him that is still given today. It was given as a gift later in 1918, the funds for it. And it is still a prize that a student at Swarthmore can earn every year. That's how influential this guy was. He was a professor of history and religion and philosophy technically. But he really influenced her as far as maybe looking towards a career in political science. That compounded with another professor named Robert Books, who had founded the Swarthmore Men's Equal Suffrage League. So he's pretty progressive himself. Together, it's making her think, medicine isn't where I'm going to go. It might be something different. He talked about these settlement houses, and she's thinking, well, maybe that might be a path I can follow. But she's keeping up with her sports teams. She had leadership roles in the literary society and in student government. She's still very active socially. She's just typical, even for today. A typical college sophomore and junior.
- [34:26]
Host 2
During senior year, everyone started bustling around making plans for the future. I remember this as being kind of a terrifying time. There's too many choices. The whole world has opened before you, but you have no practical knowledge. You have no fully developed prefrontal cortex to sort it all out. It's a lot. It's really scary. Those who had engagement rings began planning their weddings. Another large percentage began to think of becoming a, quote, young lady at home, joining society in their own cities and towns with a matrimonial goal in the future. Those who needed to earn their livings began the stressful round of correspondence and letters of recommendation that would gain them teaching positions or, since they were college graduates, educational institution, administration positions. The principles often came straight out of college. None of this appealed to Alice at all. None of it. Luckily, she received a lifeline.
- [35:27]
Host 1
Now, while she didn't need to go out and earn a living, she knew she would be financially okay. She knew she had to go out and do something in the world. She had to make the world a better place. She knew that from the day she stepped into college. So she was awarded a scholarship to go to New York City to attend the School of Philanthropy and go into a career in social work while living and working in a settlement house in New York City. We talked about the settlement house movement back in the two Jane Addams episodes. That's 111 and 113. Her settlement house, Jane Addams was In Chicago, Chicago's Hull House, and it had opened back when Alice was only four years old.
- [36:12]
Host 2
We've talked about settlement houses once before. We'll link you to the Jane Addams shows. But what they are in a nutshell. College educated women, for the most part, though not exclusively, were brought to poor neighborhoods to create assistance programs, perform sociological studies, be communicators of problems of urban society to government and press, move the needle of public opinion for the need for reform. They covered such things as working conditions, sanitation, public education, daycare, playground creation, health care, libraries. They held classes in everything from needlework to cooking, repair work, carpentry. There were clubs for people of all ages, lectures and concerts. They provided a valuable Service. Now, at 20 years old, this job in New York City was going to be the very first time that Alice would be in an environment that was not Quaker. I mean, we forget that like she has been there the whole time. And like many young people who've been sheltered under a specific umbrella, she suddenly had to come to the realization both about what a minority Quakers really were, but that beliefs and systems she'd taken for granted were a hundred percent not held by most people she would meet from now on, especially with regard to equality of the sexes. I would argue it might have been more of a shock, the class difference she faced as she began work at the Rivington Street Settlement House in New York City. It was the Lower east side, full of tenements. She got a shock at the at the neighborhood. There were newly arrived immigrants, most of whom were Jewish, fleeing from oppression in Russia and Eastern Europe, crammed into not enough space with no services. The uphill list of battles they were facing just to survive. She'd never seen anything like it.
- [38:08]
Host 1
The settlement house has adapted over the years and it is actually still open as a community center in New York. It is very close to the current Tenement Museum in New York City, which Beckett and I both will. If you go to New York, that's the one place we want you to go. It was just so amazing. So it's in that same neighborhood. So the same neighborhood with, you know, different waves of immigrants that are coming through it. Perfect place for a settlement house.
- [38:37]
Host 2
The neighborhood was jostly and loud and so very foreign to her. Alice herself was given a large, well lit room on the third floor. Her meals and washing were done for her. She, let's just say, was a little insulated from the realities outside. And I want to address something here that I actually don't have a conclusion for. People accuse Alice Paul of antisemitism. And I'm absolutely willing to receive credible information on this front. You know, there's one historian who asserts it, absolutely, but digging in, I just don't see hard evidence of this. Certainly there was an otherness, which is natural enough when it's something you've never encountered before. But she took the time to ask questions, go out in the neighborhood. She checked out books. There's evidence that she wrote to her brother about, like, oh, you should read about this. It's really neat. Here's a postcard. Blah, blah, blah. This is their new year, like, educating people. She researched the Jewish faith and experience in a way that, you know, say, Elizabeth Cady Stanton never did. She was very anti. And I'm, you know, I'm not going to really amplify that message by quoting my evidence for Elizabeth Cady Stanton's anti. Anti Semitism or her daughters, in fact. So, you know, I'm just saying I think it was more she. The closest I can really come, at least at this point in her life, was saying that America would erode the Jewish way of life. And I don't even think that, you know, America was going to knock some corners off. That's just the nature of a melting pot.
- [40:20]
Host 1
Right.
- [40:21]
Host 2
So that's as close as I could come Again, totally willing to be educated. And, you know, I dug in as, as. As deep as I could.
- [40:30]
Host 1
No, I did the same thing because I came across the same accusations and I wanted to know about them as well. And that's the same result that I ended up getting.
- [40:39]
Host 2
And later, activists that were Jewish actually thanked her publicly, gave her credit for not excluding them. So there you go. That's what we have. Feel free. I mean, I know we're all going to run up against that one historian who just asserts it, but I don't. I haven't been able to follow up on any sources from that one. So let's let that percolate. Let's give her the benefit of the doubt for now on that particular issue. More issues to follow. But that particular issue, I can say Alice was just categorically a learner. You know, she overloaded herself with more classes than expected. You know, from agency administration to navigating advocacy in the criminal courts. She. She took on clubs and classes to manage. Hilariously, she took on the needlework class and barely kept ahead of the little girls that she was running the class for, because that had never come up before.
- [41:34]
Host 1
No, no. I was so impressed. I never did this much in college. Like, if you Combined my entire four years. But she helped some women form a union, and she helped with political campaigning, too. While she was, you know, working in the neighborhoods and going out and about, she heard lectures from Florence Kelly. We talked about her in the Jane Addams episode, and other reformers on subjects from urban conditions to nursing to labor movements. And by the end of the year, Alice had more credits than necessary to graduate.
- [42:10]
Host 2
And no one at the settlement house could accuse her of shirking in any. She was the bustliest of bustlers. And you.
- [42:21]
Host 1
And it does sound like she had a very. You said insular. I mean, it was very. It was kind of like training adulthood as far as living in that settlement house, because there were all those other girls, and they were taken care of. You know, their physical needs were met so that they could go out and do the work with the community. And she could go and take her classes at the School of Philanthropy, which is still around now it's Columbia University's.
- [42:46]
Host 2
School of Social Work.
- [42:47]
Host 1
I love that there's so many of these things that she attended that are still here.
- [42:51]
Host 2
Yep. Well, they're needed. They've always been needed. This was just right at the beginning of people's discovery. But I will say, after a year, Alice had. I don't know if I'd call it pessimistic, mezzo. Pessimistic view of the effects that the settlement houses had. And I quote, she wrote, 12 women, even though aided by a large body of associate workers, can make no impression on a neighborhood as a whole where There are from 2 to 3,000 in a block, and where moving is constant. The college settlement finds its district more congested than 17 years ago, its streets as filthy as ever, its children still turned away from school. Nothing fundamental seems to have been accomplished. She came to the conclusion that it was city governments that were the ones that could operate at the scale that was really, really needed. One thing the settlement houses did do, in her view, was educate the residents of the blocks in those crowded tenements that they deserved better. They were treated as humans. They were given the dignity. That's one thing that they did do, was elevate the pride of the residents. But, you know, what am I saying? Encourage them to get educated, to make noise, to organize, to vote, to hold their own elected officials to a higher standard because they're people and they deserve to be treated with respect. So in that regard, she thought the settlement houses were very beneficial, but for the practical considerations, you know, we just can't operate at scale. We don't you know, we can't run the trash trucks. Somebody's got to come in here and give us a good foundation. Well, she did paid fieldwork as a. They didn't call him social workers. What was their name? Visitors.
- [44:46]
Host 1
Yeah, it was essentially what we would consider social workers. And she had been working on cases, you know, going into people's houses and talking about the things that they need. Instead of them having to come to the settlement house and take the classes, they were going into people's houses. And not everything that they could take at the settlement house, like the classes and the groups and things, but definitely helping them. And I think this whole time is just so eye opening, you know, for somebody who's intelligent and ambitious but had lived a very protected and privileged life. This whole time, I think is just really changing the way her brain is working.
- [45:27]
Host 2
But she didn't let her privilege status stop her from getting into the trenches. She was very good at finding housing or doctors or programs for specific cases. It was more satisfying than the settlement house, I think, because she was expected to move the needle on one person. 100%. Checked it off. The part that excited her, though, was how these conditions in the tenements had arisen in the first place and what levers of power can be created or pulled to fix the systemic problems. So we have gone back to the field of political science. Okay, social work, fine. Not necessarily for me, political science. That is what I'm going to do. As the temperatures start rising, what happens? You get that urge to buy new clothes to fit the new season. Everything you huddled in in the winter is no longer useful for you. And you want a fresh start for a fresh season. But to go along with my capsule wardrobe scenario that I'm enacting for the next year, I am not going to waste money on pieces I will only wear once or for just one season. Quince has the clothes that can make that happen. The clothes are timeless and elevated and far more than anything else at this price. And it finally feels like my wardrobe is starting to match my standards. It's matching my goals. Really.
- [47:16]
Host 1
No, I agree with. I have a friend chat group and every once in a while we use it for. How does this outfit look? Or should I wear this to this thing or that to that thing? We, like, swap pictures. So many of the pictures now are coming from quints. They're wearing Quint's clothes, too. Yeah, I personally just posted one the other day with my new 100% European linen button front dress. I have it in a blue and White pinstripe. It was so soft when it came out of the package. You know, sometimes you have to wash linen to get that. I don't know what it is. There's something in the material that you can wash out after it wasn't in there. This dress was so soft when I first put it on. And I love it. I love it. I'm so happy I have it. And I'm going to have it for years because it's a classic style. We've talked about this before. One of the things we really, really love about quints is that they work directly with top artisans and they cut out the middlemen. So you get Quint's luxury without the markup.
- [48:14]
Host 2
And important to me is quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical, and responsible manufacturing practices and also premium fabrics and finishes.
- [48:24]
Host 1
Give your summer closet an upgrade with quince. Go to quince.comchicks for free shipping on your order in 365 day returns.
- [48:34]
Host 2
That's quince.comchicks to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.comchicks so mama agreed to bankroll Alice's graduate level work in political science at the University of Pennsylvania.
- [49:06]
Host 1
It was actually kind of difficult for her to find a school because mama put a criteria on it that she had to find someplace kind of close to New Jersey. And the second huge problem was finding a school that would accept a woman. I know, I know, but University of Pennsylvania, that's an excellent choice. The term Ivy League wasn't used until the 1930s, but University of Pennsylvania is an Ivy League school, so good job, Alice.
- [49:33]
Host 2
There were only about 40 total women seeking advanced degrees at that university. Only two, including Alice in her political science program. One of the teachers that she really liked, in fact, kept making a point in all of her classes that politics was too dirty of an endeavor for women to participate in. To which he would look to camera like, yeah, we know you. We know you mean me, sir. Also, excellent lecture. Love it. Et cetera, you know?
- [50:06]
Host 1
Yeah. And the guys that she was going to school with were also absorbing that kind of mentality, like, how can a little lady absorb all these big concepts in that tiny little brain?
- [50:18]
Host 2
And it was really the first time she'd encountered such overt sexism.
- [50:23]
Host 1
Right.
- [50:24]
Host 2
You know, she's made it this far by going to an egalitarian college and high school and then working in a very women forward field at the settlement house, which is kind of an extension of college is what she said. It felt like she was having a like an internship after college or whatever, which is kind of what she was doing. This is the first time she's really seen how it really is. Alice later wrote, and I quote, women are certainly made as the peace loving half of the world, the temperate half of the world. The more power they have, the better world we're going to have. So sexism right back at you.
- [51:04]
Host 1
Yeah, exactly. She had been reading newspapers since she was a child, but during this time of her life, she began gobbling them up. She got her hands on as many as she possibly could and she read the newspapers every day cover to cover, just to follow what was going on in the political world, including 60 British suffragists who were arrested during a march for women's rights in London. That's a story she was following closely.
- [51:35]
Host 2
After getting her master's degree. A master's degree. 22. She's 20.
- [51:40]
Host 1
Just 22 years old.
- [51:41]
Host 2
And I didn't look up. I mean, so if she getting a bachelor's degree was among the 2% of college women, I, I didn't look this up, but I would be very surprised if we didn't have a 0.0 something percent.
- [51:55]
Host 1
Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
- [51:57]
Host 2
Before the master's degree. So hooray. After she got that degree, that rare, rare thing, she got an opportunity to study and work at a Quaker run program in Birmingham, England. But first, half a year of language immersion in Germany, like you do. What a whim. Like, I would like to have enough money to just be myself all the time. That would be great.
- [52:23]
Host 1
Yeah. Oh, I know, wouldn't it? She was so excited to get going on this that she skipped graduation and headed right over to Germany. It was a two week trip, a two week sail across the ocean. But the boat was full of people that were about her age, all heading off on their grand tours. So she sure got a lot of socializing done on that boat.
- [52:45]
Host 2
It was like spring break, but everybody kind of kept it together.
- [52:49]
Host 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Spring break, 1906.
- [52:52]
Host 2
Right, right. Pinkies up, spring break. Well, she tried like a hostel in Germany for a while and then was like, nope, and bougie'd her way to the other side of town. And I only mention this because of what happened later and how she reacted to it. So the, you know, I am uncomfortable in this environment with this little bit of dirt and I am going to elevate my situation. That's where she is right now. Just keep that in mind for just a little bit later.
- [53:22]
Host 1
She is not liking it. She's in Berlin. It's a. Like you said, like a boarding house. She said, I thought it was the worst place in the world at first because of the food and the people who. She thought they would probably be quite interesting if I could talk to them. Even though she had taken German all those years in school, she didn't know enough to communicate in Germany. That's.
- [53:46]
Host 2
I think that's. I mean, you know, there's a difference because I can go and order some stuff, but I don't think I can have like you want to. When you encounter a bunch of other 22 year old people, you're not going to be able to have philosophical discussion.
- [54:00]
Host 1
Right.
- [54:00]
Host 2
You just don't have that vocabulary.
- [54:02]
Host 1
Right. You can order a meal and find your way to the bathroom and talk about the weather and that's about it. Yeah, but you know what? That's a case for immersion learning.
- [54:11]
Host 2
Right. And that's why she's there. It all worked out well. On to England and to the Quaker Woodbrook Study center founded by George Cadbury. Yes, the chocolate man. Also a Quaker. Didn't know that.
- [54:24]
Host 1
Yeah, I didn't either.
- [54:27]
Host 2
The purpose of this institution was, quote, to allow young people the opportunity to fully qualify themselves spiritually, intellectually and experimentally for any service to which they have been called. That's noble.
- [54:43]
Host 1
Very. And this whole program stayed again going until Covid hit. And it was. Yeah, the declining enrollment, they had to just turn the whole property over to a trust as part of the village that they live in. So it's no longer offering classes, but it made it till 2023.
- [55:01]
Host 2
Amazing.
- [55:02]
Host 1
I know, I know.
- [55:03]
Host 2
Well, Alice over scheduled herself again. We already know. Yeah, we already know she's going to be like that. You know. Did we read about Alice Paul before we made the character of Hermione? Because that, you know, Hermione over scheduled herself so much that she got a time turner and went back in time to take more classes. Not to right the wrongs of the past, which I think is a giant plathole, but there you go. Well, so Alice, I would like to share with you that she took both philosophy and an Islamic study class as well as 10 other classes. It almost seems like learning was her drug. Almost like. Yes. Her addiction. Luckily she didn't have a cell phone to scroll. But this is like analog scrolling.
- [55:51]
Host 1
Yeah, yeah. She was so dedicated that she rode a bike four miles. Take another economics class in addition to the one she was taking at the program she was in at the University of Birmingham. She was the very first woman to enroll there. To do this.
- [56:06]
Host 2
That's amazing. And, you know, we have covered the bicycle pioneers and think about what year this is. So not only is she an economics pioneer, she's also among the bicycle pioneers. Amazing. One night, this pioneer took her bicycle out to Birmingham for another reason. One of the founders of the, quote, militant suffrage group that her mother and she had read about all those years ago, and the case she was following. Of the 60 suffragists that were arrested, Christabel Pankhurst was to be giving a lecture at the university. Alice remembered a quote from Christabel Pankhurst that she had read in the paper. It is unendurable that yet another generation of women should be wasting their lives begging for the vote. Yes. Ms. Pankhurst took the stage. And I don't know if you've ever seen a photo of Christabel Pankhurst. She looks like an angel.
- [57:09]
Host 1
She's adorable, as a matter of fact. We'll put a picture in the show notes. I have one of her mother, Emmalyn, and her sister Sylvia. And she's just in the middle, and she just looks like this doll almost. I mean, as a grown woman, right? Yeah.
- [57:24]
Host 2
But she was as tough as nails. She was a fully qualified lawyer who had been denied admittance to the Bar because she was a woman at the very, very last gate. Now, she was a charismatic and fiery speaker who provoked the status quo to such an extent that men in the audience heckled, yelled, banged things together, blew whistles, you know, did that thing where you put your finger on each side of your mouth. Sure. Can't ever do that.
- [57:56]
Host 1
I don't know how they do that.
- [57:58]
Host 2
But otherwise made it completely impossible for Ms. Pankhurst speech to be heard. Christabel, of course, was very used to it, but Alice was horrified. Horrified and wrote. Any normal person who saw someone who was working for what they always believed to be treated this way would be very aroused, by which, of course, she meant energized or angered. Not like, well, this is awesome. No, no, that was a very awkward quote.
- [58:29]
Host 1
Cristabelle was only five years older than Alice, and like Alice, her upbringing kind of formed who she was. Her family was extremely progressive. Her father. Her father, he'd been a barrister, the founder of the Independent Labor Party, the Women's Franchise League, the national society for women's suffrage. And he was the author of what would become the Married Woman's Property act of 1882, which gave wives of full control of their property and their money in Great Britain. So her. Her dad was extraordinarily progressive, active in it. Although he did pass away in 1898, but his wife Emilyn took up his work.
- [59:13]
Host 2
The whole audience did get to hear Christabel Pankhurst speech. Eventually the university re invited her, vetted the next audience better, and then potato sacked people out if they popped off. I love that term, potato sacked because it really, you know, exactly what it is. Yeah, well, they just potato sacked him out of there.
- [59:37]
Host 1
They made the student body show up the second time and it was policed, I mean, by staff.
- [59:42]
Host 2
But the shock of seeing her treated that way and the inspiration, once she was able to hear the content of Christabel Pankhurst speech percolated. Just a little spark of inspiration that went down and began to smolder.
- [59:59]
Host 1
At that second speech, Alice had her, I hate to use this term, but her light bulb moment, her aha, oh moment. She quote, understood everything about what the English militants were trying to do and became a heart and soul convert. Yep, she's in.
- [60:18]
Host 2
There was an interesting adventure right about now, and I don't know how to characterize it exactly. She was working at a settlement house and then embarked on a Nellie Bly like adventure. She took up the clothing of a working girl and went to apply for a job at a jam factory. The jam factory ended up being full, but people advised her, well, there's a tire factory hiring, let's all walk down there. And out of the 40 or so girls that were waiting in the yard to be chosen for work, the foreman chose Alice. And she went and worked incognito while living at the settlement house as a factory worker for a week. I actually don't understand this episode at all unless she was so inspired and didn't have anywhere to put it, I think, I don't know. But the people that lived at the settlement house were so impressed by it that they actually offered her a full time job.
- [61:23]
Host 1
I think the reason that she did it really was because even though she could go into people's homes and see how they lived and talk with them, she didn't understand it because it was so foreign from the way she grew up in the environment she was in. So she decided to do just like she did with the German language immersion. You had said that the motto of this organization, it's called the Women's Social and Political Union, was deeds not words, which is biblical. That's probably something that just really resonated with her, you know, because of her upbringing. The deeds not words part. And that's a deed, not a word is going to Throw herself into that life.
- [62:02]
Host 2
Through her contacts at the settlement house, Alice heard of parallel suffrage processions. They weren't called parades, they were called processions. Just like what had happened in the United States. The suffrage movement had splintered into the Pankhurst's, quote, militant branch and the more conservative group that worked to elect and influence pro suffrage members of Parliament. Alice, along with many other suffragists, decided that she was going to march in both of them. That was not seen as betraying the other one. If you. If you marched in one. The first march that was scheduled was the more conservative group. Now, that said they had 4,500 participants, which, if you think about that, that is. That is a lecture stadium. That is a large, large amount of people. They marched in dignified procession. Onlookers said that they were earnest and positive and gave a good impression. The general view was, ah, that's really, you know, ah, they really. They're really saying stuff. You know, it's more like, how nice of them to have taken this walk. Yeah, basically, you know, nobody was mad. Nobody raised their voice. It was a perfectly respectable, peaceful, positive outcome. An hour and a half later, it was over, and Alice felt that she'd been a part of something bigger than herself. She was uplifted. She was cautiously hopeful. That seems to be the feeling everyone went home with as they peeled away in groups of two or three to go back to their lives. Well, the Pankhurst group had greater ambitions. Number one, they had a better series of party planners. They developed a color scheme for greater impact. White, green, and purple. White was a very common color to have in your wardrobe, similar to the way that black might be now. You know, I don't know a lot of ladies that have. You don't have a whole wardrobe of white dresses now, but they did then. It was a very common thing to have.
- [64:15]
Host 1
You know, whenever you choose colors for an organization, they all the colors symbolize something. So the white was for purity, the green was for hope, and the purple was for dignity.
- [64:25]
Host 2
Excellent.
- [64:26]
Host 1
I know.
- [64:27]
Host 2
In addition, there was a whole team whose whole job was pr. The PR campaign ahead of time. Do come and see us, won't you? Posters went up. The scuttlebutt went out. Their job was to get the audience.
- [64:45]
Host 1
They were so clever. And they would write on the sidewalk in chalk about where things were. That was their method of communicating with the public. Instead of placards and signs on posts, sidewalk talk.
- [64:58]
Host 2
People who had connections placed newspaper stories. Their job was to raise public interest. Still others hired police Protection. Very smart. On the day, hundreds of thousands, I'm not joking, of spectators waited in Hyde park for what was to come. And what they saw was a spectacle. Seven different parades approached from different directions, all color coordinated, waving banners, penance and signs that read things like, rebellion to tyranny is obedience to God. There were 30,000 marchers. Yes. Once they all coalesced in the center, they separated into 20 different areas where there were platforms containing fiery inspirational speakers there to inspire the marchers. Yes, but who else was there with their ears? All of the audience, those hundreds of thousands of people. At a certain predetermined time, there was a trumpet blast, and that was the cue for all of the marchers to yell in unison. Votes for women. Votes for women. Votes for women. Imagine, 30,000 people, a stadium worth of people yelling that in unison. And wow, it was thrilling. Absolutely thrilling. Alice had never felt this way, ever. She began to attend WSPU meetings. That's the pain cursed group. But was careful to keep this news from her mama, uncertain how this would fly at home.
- [66:47]
Host 1
And she's riding home and asking for more money all the time because she needs money to live on. And you know, her mom is great. Da, da, da. Nothing exciting going on. Can I have some more money?
- [66:58]
Host 2
She was dependent on her mother financially here in 1908. Now she was still only 23. It's not unheard of. It's definitely. If you weren't a married woman of 23, you were financially dependent on your family most of the time. Time she was attending classes at the London School of Economics and trying to be self supporting by working at another settlement house. Mama really did exert constant pressure on her to just come home, just come home. And Alice almost bullied her beleaguered parents into sending money. I mean, you read the letters and it's like, yeah, thanks for the news. Also, I really need a coat. Also, I wish you'd send $50. Also, there's just. It goes too fast here. Also, like, I mean, I know. Oh, my God.
- [67:45]
Host 1
I know, I know.
- [67:46]
Host 2
For the first time in her life, she didn't have any servants here. That's the. I mean, yeah.
- [67:52]
Host 1
Oh, no.
- [67:53]
Host 2
There's levels of power, you know, we are now servantless. Basically. She'd gone off grid as far as the people she'd grown up with. She was homesteading now. Yeah. And social work had lost its allure a little bit. And Alice decided she was going to get her doctorate and then teach. And this appeased her mother, who had wanted her to teach from the beginning, everything hinged on a two year fellowship from Swarthmore, which would pay for the whole endeavor of getting her doctorate and teaching. However, Alice was determined she was going to take up her education for her doctorate in Germany and not come home. Alice was more determined than ever not to come home. She sent off her application and awaited her fate. Another doctoral candidate recruited Alice into the scary proposition of selling the Pankhurst's newspaper.
- [68:50]
Host 1
The newspaper was called simply Votes for Women. What Alice would do is go out into the streets and come face to face with people who may not necessarily have been keen about her message. But while she claimed she was not brave by nature, she was passing out these newspapers. Soon she was standing on street corners or in tube stations and she was basically preaching about women's suffrage. For someone who claims to not be brave, that sounds very, very brave.
- [69:22]
Host 2
Also, London law said that vendors couldn't block the pavement sidewalk to Americans. They had to stand in the gutter. Well, if that's not symbolic. The newspaper sellers faced abuse from passersby and danger from the road. And Alice was so poised and so patient and so successful. And that's why the organization began to ask her to be a speaker.
- [69:49]
Host 1
They were actively courting her is the way I looked at it. You know, they were, they saw what she was doing. They saw that she was so eloquent and was so patient in her message and she wasn't, you know, she was just ignoring all the naysayers and just speaking like this is the truth. I know you're gonna listen to me, you know, that was her attitude. Yeah, they wanted her.
- [70:11]
Host 2
I mean, this isn't just disapproval or side eye or a little bit of tut tutting. She's dodging rotten fruit and she's sparring with hecklers or being patient while they said their peace and then just continuing. It's, it was open season against these women in a, in a way that shocks me a little. I guess the public, some of the public thought, well, if these women are going to step out of their, quote, God given position and get off their pedestal, I guess the public felt justified in roughing them up. You know, I, it's, it's kind of hard to understand, you know, but Alice was making a name for herself as an un. Unruffled soldier. That's literally what they called her, Unruffled soldier. And when her mother forwarded her the letter of rejection from the Fellowship Committee along with a tart demand for Alice's return, it seemed like there was no longer anything holding her back. From full participation in the suffragette movement. Now, I want to tell you a word about that name, suffragette. It started to be, you know, suffragist is what. What we would say. And to mock them, you know, when you say, like, something is little, you add et to it, like, oh, what a precious little suffragist. And so they started to call them suffragettes. The suffragettes decided they would embrace it. And so suffragette, even though it's a more feminine type of name, began to be associated with the more militant, some say violent army of the suffrage movement in England. So whenever, if we ever say suffragette, it is their own term and said with respect, just to let you know.
- [71:54]
Host 1
It's like if you call us chicks.
- [71:56]
Host 2
Exactly.
- [71:56]
Host 1
Yeah.
- [71:57]
Host 2
The fundamental principle of the suffragette movement was, and I quote, moral authority trumps the letter of the law. I want to say one more thing.
- [72:07]
Host 1
Thanks for listening. Bye.
- [72:08]
Host 2
I want to say one more thing. This movement was now at the point where they decided to test their historical right to address the Prime Minister. The basis for their right was the 1689 Bill of Rights. And I'm going to quote it for you. They wrote it actually on paper and pasted it all as close as they could get to the Houses of Parliament. It is the right of the subject to petition the King. And all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal commitments, meaning imprisonment.
- [72:44]
Host 1
So she's facing imprisonment if she continues this work. If Alice continues this work, she knows the imprisonment is on the docket, it's going to be hard to avoid it.
- [72:55]
Host 2
She actually was told flat out to expect to be assaulted by the police or by onlookers and expressly said, if you do not accept the risk of arrest, you should stay home.
- [73:06]
Host 1
And she said, sign me up.
- [73:07]
Host 2
Her first action, her first big action, other than the, you know, the parade with this group was a coordinated, let's call it, cavalcade of 16 different deputations that would take their turn knocking on the door of Parliament to be let in to address the Prime Minister. When one was rebuffed, the next would appear as if by magic. And really, it was like Groundhog Day is what they were perpetuating. Perpet. What am I saying?
- [73:40]
Host 1
Perpetrating is their method.
- [73:42]
Host 2
Groundhog Day is what they're perpetrating here.
- [73:45]
Host 1
Yeah. And they had requested the audience of the Prime Minister the right way, and they were consistently denied. So Emily Pankhurst said, okay, then, we're just going to make you see us and this entire group of women just, you know, when you see those movies and they go into battle and the front line is decimated. But then the next lines come up and do the same thing. That's exactly what they're doing. You know, there's 200 people waiting. You know, eight get denied. Okay, Then the next group is going to come up and get. Do the same thing. They were constantly refused entry, of course, but then Emily got the ball rolling by slapping the face of a police officer. And all the rest of the group just pushed forward. And that's when the police got really violent and just were throwing these women to the ground. Now, the women knew that this was going to happen. They had layers of clothes on, so if you looked at them, you're like, oh, this woman are a little chubby. No, they were padded because they knew they were probably going to be hit in the ground. And they. They absolutely were.
- [74:54]
Host 2
A bystander described the police as grabbing the women by the throat and throwing them on their backs. Arrests were made.108.
- [75:03]
Host 1
And Alice was one of them.
- [75:05]
Host 2
She wrote her mother, I can't come home until the trial is over. Btws, I've been arrested. You know.
- [75:15]
Host 1
Like, no big deal.
- [75:17]
Host 2
Oh, my gosh.
- [75:18]
Host 1
While she was at the police station, she spotted another woman who was also arrested, only she was wearing an American flag pin. So Alice went up and introduced herself. The woman's name was Lucy Burns. She was about six years older than Alice. She's from Brooklyn. She was a Vassar grad. She had taught for a couple years. I mean, that's the path, right? She had then gone on to study at the University of Bonn in Germany, like you do, and, yeah, no big deal. She pretended that she was heading to England afterwards to study at Oxford when she was leaving the US but instead she joined the Women's Social and Political Union.
- [75:57]
Host 2
Very good.
- [75:58]
Host 1
Yep, very smart. Very smart.
- [76:00]
Host 2
Well, Alice and Lucy Burns would have a long and storied history. Alice was known as the militant, and Burns was known as the diplomat. In their future career, there was a lot of comparison between them and the friendship between Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It was said of them that they operated with one mind and spirit in their work. And I. This is where it all began. Is in the waiting room waiting to be processed during their arrest after the action at Parliament.
- [76:38]
Host 1
So when Alice had written home to her mother and said, you know, I'll come back after the trial, she asked her mother for 100 bucks so she could buy passage back to the United States. When it came to trial, the charges were Dropped. But instead of getting on that boat, she attended another protest and was arrested again. This time, she was sentenced to 14 days in prison.
- [77:01]
Host 2
This time she was sent to Holloway Prison. And the Pankhursts had trained their activists in ways to behave when arrested. They were to link arms and chant until you couldn't anymore. You were to destroy everything you could get your hands on once they left you to yourself and do not comply with anything they request of you, including clothing changes. This she followed. And Alice ended up naked in her cell for a number of hours. And now think about how horrible it would be just for you, me, even more horrible when you know you're not fully dressed without 23 pounds of clothing on, right, and the layers that you've lived in your whole life. She was beaten and bruised in a strange place with no clothes on, and in fact, didn't receive any clothes, only received a blanket until she could get her clothes back. At the end, when she was released.
- [78:03]
Host 1
The reason why they wouldn't put on the uniforms that the. That prison was giving them is that they were demanding to be treated as a political prisoner, not a criminal prisoner. Therefore, they are not subjected to the conditions that a criminal prisoner would have. That was their demand. They obviously didn't get it because Alice was sitting there with no clothes on, just wrapped in a blanket.
- [78:27]
Host 2
A little bit further back in time, one of the activists had, through, you know, obstinacy and anger, sort of developed a technique that worked very well for a while. The concept of a hunger strike by a prisoner, I will tell you, it appalled the authority figures in the jail that particular person was in. They were completely surprised and chivalry ward with their concept of criminality. And it was like, oi, oi. They didn't know what to do and ended up releasing that prisoner. Oh, ho, said the Pankhurst and friends, this is an effective technique. And so Alice, with the people she had been arrested with, began intentionally fasting, which was familiar to many religious traditions. The intentional short fast. However, this went on for days, and by day five, appalled that the women had held out so long, the authorities ordered their release. They're just not yet sure what to do with the hunger strikers. Oh, this would change more on that later, but for now, it was an effective technique.
- [79:43]
Host 1
Alice wrote home to her mother about the whole thing. I mean, at least she's being honest. She wrote to her mother, I shall never go on a hunger strike again. I think.
- [79:51]
Host 2
Yeah, well, and at home, you know, Quaker, quote, disobedience has a long and storied history, doesn't it? We just have to think back to the abolition movement. Now, of course, being arrested and naked is not really something Mama could brag about over tea. But some people began when they, you know, had the outline of what was going on, to have a little bit of grudging respect for someone that would stick their neck out in that way. For others, notably her mother, did continue to send her money after her arrest. Now, she was arrested multiple times after that. Once, actually, after disrupting his speech by Winston Churchill, who was not entirely the friend of suffragettes. We didn't know that before we went to London the first time, really. She was arrested multiple times. There were different degrees of treatment. You know, the Scots treated her well. Different people were sympathetic or. Or not. But the novelty of all of this got her press coverage that made its way all the way back to Philadelphia. And Mama did begin to save clippings and letters that she had received from the dismissive. Alice Paul's mind has been weakened by her excessive education. Okie dokie.
- [81:09]
Host 1
Kidding.
- [81:09]
Host 2
Alrighty, on to the more appreciative. All reforms are tabooed in their early stages, which I'm taking as a gesture of appreciation. You know, like, the pioneers are always questioned.
- [81:24]
Host 1
Right.
- [81:24]
Host 2
And she is sticking her neck out there. And, you know, the public was divided, too, on the tactics. Why does it have to be so violent? Well, they didn't listen to us when we asked nicely. They had many opportunities to do the right thing. They chose not to. We have to bring the smoke to them then. You know, like, I. It was a very linear progression, according to the painkers.
- [81:47]
Host 1
Well, at this point, she and Lucy are traveling with Emmalyn all over. You just said Scotland, but all over Great Britain to help protest wherever they were. So they were, like, in the inner circle of the head of the women's movement in England at the time. And she was so impressed because the driver of Emily Pankhurst's car was a woman, which was extraordinarily unusual. And Alice was just thrilled about that. She couldn't wait to tell her mom that. Not sure that this is so much a secret anymore, but I love my Blissy pillowcases. Okay, that's just an opinion, but their silk pillowcases really changed my hair game, and my skin is better for them as well. Blissey's pillowcases are made from 100% silk. There is a cheaper version that's called satin. Not made by Blissey, but it's cheap for a reason. Satin is made from synthetics. It's rough on your hair and skin, which defeats the entire reason for using a Blissy pillowcase. And I've gone even farther. I have a Blissey silk bonnet now. I have curly hair. I know that this works on straight hair because my stylist says her daughter is religious about using her silk bonnet and she has straight hair. The silk bonnet. I'm not going to lie. It felt silly to wear it at first, but now it's just like part of my outfit when I go to bed. It does such a great job of keeping my hairstyle intact and helping to eliminate frizz. So a refresh in the morning is so easy. And silk has hydration properties. It keeps your skin moisturized all night. It's antibacterial and hypoallergenic. And at this time of year, it's like the cool side of the pillowcase all night long. Blissey's silk pillowcases are so easy to care for, I just throw them in the laundry with all the rest of my sheets. Machine wash and dryable Blissey Pillowcases come in 77. Zero colors, including a new Wicked line. Because your listener Blissey is offering 60 nights risk free, plus an additional 30% off when you shop at blissy.com historychicks that's blissy. B-L-I-S-S-Y.com historychicks and use code historychicks to get an additional 30% off your skin and your hair will thank you.
- [84:47]
Host 2
The year was 1909, and Alice was arrested again. Same old, same old. I've been arrested tons of times, but this time there were new horrors. The authorities in Holloway Prison had overcome their trepidation about the hunger strikers, and Alice and friends were subject to the horrific practice of forcible feeding, which I do think we should talk about and tell you about. But if you have children with you or if you have reason to shy away from stories of physical violence, we think you should skip ahead just a little bit and come back almost exactly. Five minutes will do it. Okay? At first they merely held me, she wrote, but after a few times they tied me to a chair as my struggles made it difficult to feed me. They tied me down by a sheet around the abdomen and another around the lungs. One of the doctors stood behind and pulled my head back till it was parallel with the ground and held it in this position by means of a towel drawn tightly around my throat. If I tried to move, he drew the towel so tight it compressed the windpipe and made it almost impossible to breathe. The other doctor put the tube down through the nostril and poured a mixture of milk and eggs into my stomach. The tube very rarely went down the first time. It would usually go about three fourths of the way through my head. And he would be unable to push it any further. He would push as though he were trying to drive a stake into the ground, but it would not budge. So he would pull it out again and grease it again and try the other nostril. It would happen again and again. Usually it went down the third time. Sometimes it took six or seven times. When it finally emerged from my head into the throat, it often caused a choking and gasping for breath. Alice herself, during this stint in prison, endured this treatment 55 times in a row.
- [86:47]
Host 1
Right? Twice a day. That particular scenario would play out for Alice. They would literally drag her from her cell. She knew what was gonna happen, and she continued to suffer.
- [87:01]
Host 2
When the news got out about how these particular prisoners were being treated, the American Embassy was brought in to see if they could do anything to release her. Her state made the papers in America. NASA, actually, in America, petitioned President Taft to intervene. The embassy of came down unbelievably on the side of, well, they're also doing it to their own citizens, Right. So we really can't stop them doing it to ours for the same sentence. It's. That's baffling.
- [87:35]
Host 1
That's. While that's going on, then Emilyn Pankhurst is on a speaking tour. You know, she is there to show the United States that this image that they have of the suffragettes, of these. These disheveled and just wild women, was. Is just that it's a stereotypical, not actual situation, and that the actual suffragists are charming and intelligent and poised. And while she's doing this, she's bringing up what's going on with Alice over in England, and she says, what are you American women going to do about it?
- [88:12]
Host 2
It.
- [88:12]
Host 1
You know, what are you gonna do? She's doing this for us. What are you gonna do for yourselves?
- [88:19]
Host 2
Wow. I know. I mean, she was elevating Alice to the status of Joan of Arc almost. You know, she's like.
- [88:28]
Host 1
Her only offense was proclaiming at a public banquet, votes for women Now. Okay? She had snuck into the banquet dressed as a maid, hid in a balcony, and then screamed it as the banquet was going on. But basically, that's what happened, you know?
- [88:46]
Host 2
And then she suffered torture to that extent. Well, once she was released, the Pankhursts had a network of. I don't even know what to Call it like almost like safe houses. Yeah, safe houses, yeah.
- [89:02]
Host 1
The women would go to estate homes that were run by other women that supported the program and basically just nursed them back to health. You know, they came out obviously very weak, very traumatized, and they needed to get their strength and their health back. And that gave them the opportunity to do that.
- [89:18]
Host 2
After some soul searching, and upon the advice of one of the doctors who was treating her, Alice finally agreed to make the trip home. And on her way to the boat, someone said, you'll be able to accomplish so much in America. Alice remembers thinking, what on earth can I do? Also, I hope I'm never in the papers again after this. I'm all done. And that resolution lasted almost seven days.
- [89:47]
Host 1
That's right. In the amount of time it took her to go back, she was, you know, on the boat and out of the public eye. But because her imprisonment and her activism had made the papers in the United States, when her boat docked, reporters were there anxious to talk with her, as were other suffrage workers in the United States. They all wanted a piece of her.
- [90:10]
Host 2
Letters flooded in asking her to speak at suffrage meetings. And her matter of fact tone and well thought out responses surprised her audiences who expected, I guess, a messy haired, crazy person.
- [90:24]
Host 1
Yeah, the same thing they expected of Emily and Prankhurst, this wild eyed, disheveled woman screeching votes for women.
- [90:31]
Host 2
And instead they got expert oratory and careful thought out philosophy based on experiences in the settlement movement and also the suffrage movement. She had a master's degree. She was a child of privilege. You know, she was a poster child. And people didn't know which way to jump. She just reassured them, women of all classes are now fighting for the ballot.
- [91:00]
Host 1
And you know, she wanted to talk about women's suffrage here in the United States, but people wanted to hear her talk about the scandalous stuff about the force feeding, about her destroying property by breaking windows. How could you do such a thing? And Alice did give them the points, the bullet points on all that stuff. But her overriding point was, look, humans have a far greater value than any number of windows. Women's voices are already broken. But we can fix that by recognizing our right to vote.
- [91:38]
Host 2
When she was 25, NASA held a national convention. And Alice was, as she listened, secretly, very impatient at what she saw as the hand wringing patience of the American movement. And she wrote, women who have grown gray in the suffrage cause have told me they've almost lost hope.
- [92:03]
Host 1
Well, why wouldn't they? This whole meeting began with a visit from President William Howard Taft, who the organization thought would add a voice of acceptance to their cause, but instead he takes the stage and he says basically he used to believe in women's suffrage, but he's changed his mind.
- [92:24]
Host 2
And you know what? Sometimes life requires a Boston Tea Party, then. Yep. So we're gonna observe, all of us, especially Alice, and let those feelings simmer. Well, fame and her own value earned her a doctoral fellowship at Penn University, focusing on, as her dissertation, women's historical legal status and the implications for the future. She began to operate under the NASA umbrella. Um, she was known for a lack of fear about authorities, objections. Well, I think American police were not ready to escalate to the level that she had been subjected to. She sort of made authorities, objections disappear actually before her, her fame, you know, about what she'd been through. Also in America, the novelty of such a well bred young woman acting like this. She was still reduced to her appearance, I think.
- [93:22]
Host 1
Yeah, yeah. No, they definitely talked about how she looked more than what she was saying.
- [93:26]
Host 2
Yeah, she was reduced to her appearance, you know, and they should be scared of what's in her head is what they should be regarding, I think.
- [93:37]
Host 1
You know, she got her PhD from UPenn, which made her more educated than the president at 27. Yeah. While he had taught at Yale, his alma mater, he was only educated through a law degree. So basically through her master's and now she's got a PhD. Yeah. He was convinced William Howard Taft, as well as anybody that was anti suffrage, was convinced that, that intelligent, patriotic women wouldn't vote. But the less desirable lower class women are the ones that are going to vote. And there's Alice with her PhD. I'm sorry, Dr. Alice Paul.
- [94:17]
Host 2
Although I will tell you as a Quaker, they don't believe in titles. Right. And so she actually declined to use her title, although she had earned the right to be called Dr. Alice Paul. Modesty sort of required. And she chose never to use it. It was enough to have accomplished it, you know, which I admire, I think.
- [94:38]
Host 1
Oh, definitely. Alice and Lucy began doing street corner suffrage meetings very similar to what she was doing in London. You know, standing in the street, on the gutter, on the side of the street and just giving speeches. They were holding meetings. One of their meetings in Philadelphia, it grew to a rally for 2,000 people. It's just within months of her arrival back in the United States.
- [95:02]
Host 2
Well, Nassa were no fools and they saw the advantage of keeping her on the team. She was a powerful magnet for support and through some sympathetic members in high Places including our old friend Jane Addams, vice president of the whole thing, Alice Paul, and her former suffragette and prisoner activist Lucy Burns, her partner in. In work, not in life, as far as we know, were nominated to run what was called the Congressional Committee, a group that would lobby and do PR for what was called the Susan B. Anthony Amendment to the Constitution. And it reads like this. Again I say, the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. Now, honestly, this was seen as a secondary priority for the NASA, who preferred slow and steady progress, state by state. This amendment had been written in 1878, and in the 35 years that it had been out there, Congress had only taken it up one time and put it in a drawer. And recent achievements by getting the vote for women in California and Oregon and Arizona and Kansas had sort of bolstered their belief that seeking a federal solution was a waste of time. But knock yourself out. You know, Alice, we think it's a.
- [96:36]
Host 1
Waste of time, but if anybody's going to do it, it's going to be two you two whipper stabbers.
- [96:40]
Host 2
Like, okay, well, it's almost like were they. Were they put in a drawer or were. I don't think they were given any chance of success. I think it was a way to keep them occupied and the fire brands out of the news. That's what I think. I mean, I'm just saying it out loud. That's what I think.
- [96:59]
Host 1
Yeah, I mean she, they had her as a speaker at one of their conventions. Yeah, no, you might be right. That's the biggest mistake they would have made.
- [97:08]
Host 2
Well, and then even, and this sounds like a familiar quote because I've said it myself, Alice wrote, I decided the only way to get this federal solution done was to do it myself. So Alice took it up as a real genuine assignment, whatever the motivations of the people who gave it to her.
- [97:27]
Host 1
You know, NASA had had a couple of parades to continue to advance their suffrage message. And Alice thought that perhaps organizing one in Washington D.C. would be the way to do that on a federal level.
- [97:42]
Host 2
Well, it was kind of a radical idea based on the Pankhurst's. Remember that epic procession in Hyde park was what was in Alice's mind. And you know, the Americans hadn't been there. They didn't see how effective that was. Alice proposed a grand, grand parade in Washington D.C. and she was initially shot down. It was upcoming the inauguration of the new president, Woodrow Wilson. And they Said, no, we're going to have a little suffrage pod in that procession. Won't that be fun? And she's like, no, no, not ma' ams. As part of the upcoming inauguration, a different day specifically set apart the day before. To show graphically that half of this country's population has no real voice in its operation. We need concrete evidence of our protest about our disenfranchisement. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's too crazy.
- [98:45]
Host 1
Like, and then she's saying, well, let's hold it on Pennsylvania Avenue. I mean, what better place than, you know, leading up to the Capitol? What. What better place?
- [98:55]
Host 2
Like, the same route the President was going to take the next day.
- [98:58]
Host 1
Right?
- [98:58]
Host 2
Like, why should we take this subsidiary route? Let's take the real one. Whoa. Now they're like, okay, you two, they thought they were going to cancel this. You go ahead and come up with the money and then let us know what you think. After that, we'll, we'll reconvene the committee and we'll have a little think like red rag to a bowl.
- [99:18]
Host 1
Okay? It is only three months away. The presidential inauguration was three months away. And so I can see why they would think that nothing would be able to be accomplished in that amount of time, especially since they were self funding, you know, in a city that they'd never lived in before.
- [99:35]
Host 2
Well, she and Lucy moved to Washington, D.C. and began to exercise all of their skill. Alice got money, supplies, connections, workers, enthusiasm. Susan B. Anthony's former secretary gave Alice Susan B. Anthony's real personal, actual desk from which to work on this project.
- [99:56]
Host 1
They were even donated an office. Three months. They've got three months to do this project. As soon as they hit the ground, they're getting it all together. People are coming out of the woodwork, work to help them.
- [100:07]
Host 2
Anyone that stopped by just to visit was also put to work. Like, no, looky lose here address envelopes, like, you know, work on these banners. Like, take your hat off, you're in here now. Nasser was actually surprised at how much money came in, how, how much willingness there was to work on this. There was a large donation from someone we've talked about before, Alva Vanderbilt, as was now Alva Belmont, the mama of Gilded Age heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt. Nasser was a little unnerved, I think, to tell you the truth. Alice was dragging them into the deep end.
- [100:45]
Host 1
Oh, she was dragging them fast. You know, she was meeting with the heads of the police department, the city commissioners, I mean, and she's also needs to be assured that there's going to be enough police presence because she knows that people aren't going to be crazy about seeing this. She even went to the Secretary of War to try and get military presence there at the parade. And the police are like, nope, we've got this covered.
- [101:09]
Host 2
Okay, so there were 950 members from the D.C. police force that were participating in the security. Well, they were there for this. This parade, and only 840 for the inauguration the next day, by the way.
- [101:23]
Host 1
And everything she did, she made sure that press releases were sent out. So there's, you know, a little momentum going in the newspapers. She needed to get approval to have that event on Pennsylvania Avenue on March 3. And she used the press as much as she could to get that going.
- [101:42]
Host 2
She proposed a spectacle, not simply a parade of human beings walking down a street. There would be floats, bands, cars, banners, horsewomen, tableaux on steps based on classical themes. She worked around the clock, and she expected a lot of herself and a lot of her volunteers. I think she broke quite a few of them, actually. And they're the ones that felt ashamed. They didn't blame her. They're like, oh, I'm weak. It's. It's too much.
- [102:10]
Host 1
I know. I love that they. Because they were having it on Pennsylvania Avenue, there was already viewing stands there, so she got permission to use those, and she convinced the powers in the commissioner's office to build a second set. The whole idea with the stands is you can sell those seats. So that's even more money coming in.
- [102:32]
Host 2
NASA was almost a hindrance. They got a little. I mean, my husband would say they peed a circle around it. It's really unladylike. But he. They. They wanted all the funding and all the permissions to be funneled through their office. But Alice and Lucy thought that that was a very inefficient office, and they have a serious lack of urgency, and that would just derail their project completely. And so they sidestepped whatever regulations NASA put forth.
- [103:03]
Host 1
You know, Alice wanted to use the same colors that the Pankhurst organization had used. And NASA, you know, threw a fit like, oh, no, we do not want to be associated with those militants. So Alice has to make a compromise. Green for gold. So it's purple, white, and gold. And they're like, okay, that's fine. We just do not want to be associated with those militants and not said or maybe said. We don't have evidence you were one of those militants. So we're really concerned about you being militant here. I mean, just little. I Mean, she has to find housing for 5,000 marchers. She has to see the completion of 20 floats. There has to be badges and banners and flyers and press releases going out everywhere. So she's being pulled in so many different directions.
- [103:54]
Host 2
The big plans were beginning to be made. There would be groups marching by profession, you know, nurses, teachers, lawyers, et cetera. There were groups by colleges, by state delegations, by countries where women had achieved suffrage. Sympathetic senators and congressmen had their own section. There was a section that referred to the Seneca falls Group of 1848 speakers were sent out to rally participation from workers organizations, college students, radical organizations, congress. It's men and women from every state. We spoke about this, though, in both our Mary Church Terrell and our Ida B. Wells. Shows what of the participation of African American women. There is a pantheon of assertions right here about what happened at this part of the organization.
- [104:53]
Host 1
Alice was writing to women's groups and suffrage organizations all across the country. I mean, once all these groups started saying, yes, we're going to come, we're going to come, you know, the ball was rolling down the hill. There's no way that anybody could stop anything at this point. But she was also writing to black women's groups because as we talked about in those particular episodes, they were extraordinarily politically active. And they were saying, okay, yes, I think we will come. That sounds like a good idea. Well, the Southern ladies were not keen on that one bit. No, no, we can't have the black women marching. And Alice's. There's, as far as I could tell, there's no evidence that Alice was. Was totally on board with them at all. She wanted to let them participate. But at that point, you know, this ball is rolling down the hill. She's willing to make some compromises, but I don't know. I don't know. I.
- [105:49]
Host 2
Well, let's just say out loud what. What the assorted positions are. There is an assertion that Alice Paul herself demanded all the African American women walk in a delegation at the back, or at least the back of the walkers. There were cars behind the walkers, but at least at the back of the walkers en masse as one group. There is an assertion that she suggested, okay, then, do we, in order to protect, you, need to kind of insert the quote, colored contingent in between sympathetic northern states, since the southern states are the ones that are tripping. Like, you know, she has a lot going on also, she's trying to solve this problem. She supposedly came to the conclusion that the African American women should march where they like, as long as people don't bother her about it. Because she did say, and this is actually a failing that she shared with Susan B. Anthony. This is why that women's movement schismed in the first place. In the Wayback Machine, she balked at, quote, mixing civil rights for African Americans into her suffrage work. She wanted to narrow the focus to gaining women's suffrage. You know, Alice Paul stands accused of impatience with this additional factor, this last minute situation of race. You will often read that Alice Paul demanded at the last minute that everyone had to walk in the back. It actually seems to be some marchers on the day used the excuse in that era of no cell phones to try to get the African American marchers to self segregate.
- [107:34]
Host 1
Right, right.
- [107:35]
Host 2
Which was uncontrollable by Alice Paul in the office.
- [107:39]
Host 1
I mean, there's no making everybody happy.
- [107:41]
Host 2
Well, this is a failing. Yeah, this is something that she wrote, and I quote, I cannot see that having this procession without their participation is in any way injuring them in the least. I mean, you know, so as far as she was concerned, if they wanted to bow out at this point, then they were free to do so. She really genuinely did not see how important it was to have representation from the African American community. She didn't prohibit it. She also, you know, didn't really go to bat for it in a great national way either. You know, we can't all be perfect.
- [108:20]
Host 1
No, I agree. Yes, exactly right there.
- [108:22]
Host 2
We can't all be perfect. You know, we're putting a lot on this one person. Yes, but she was a person of great power and influence who purposely chose not to wield her power for the cause of racial equality. Something she doubled down on in subsequent years, which we'll talk about in part two. So it's out there. We'll talk about it more. In part two. Ida Wells was famously excluded from the Illinois delegation and then rejoined it during the actual parade, coming from the crowd. And I, now that I've read all these accounts, that seems to be chicanery like that. Somebody tricked her on the ground that, oh, it came from above. You know, you gotta walk with the colored contingent, which in fact didn't exist. There was no like colored contingent. There were actually approximately 50 African American women distributed throughout. The largest group of them was in the college section. The Delta Sigma Theta sorority group from Howard University had 25 women marching with their college banner. So there it is. I mean, disappointing, of course.
- [109:35]
Host 1
Yes.
- [109:35]
Host 2
It could have been better. I think that's a sentiment that prevails to the modern day, you know, do these reforms you wish so heartily for apply to all women women or just to white women? It's an enduring question. Okay. And so the day dawned, March 3, 1913. The woman suffrage procession began with Inez Mulholland riding a horse called Grey dawn astride rather than side saddle. Ooh. She wore a white dress and a cape and a tiara. And Inez was photogenic. She was known as, quote, the most beautiful suffragist. This was, I think, the fourth time that she had opened a parade in this way. And I'm like, please, why are you using her for her beauty in this way? She had, you know, maybe we should do a mini cast on Inez Mulholland. She was an enormously accomplished activist. However, she also at this time was famous for opening suffrage processions. And thus she did. She rode that white horse with her tiara as the herald of the future and an example of the new woman. And then came drawn by the photo, I think is one horse. It could be a team of horses, I don't know. A large float that was nothing really more than a double sided billboard that said, we demand an amendment to the constitution of the United States enfranchising the women of this country.
- [111:15]
Host 1
The way this whole parade was organized is just mind boggling to me. We'll put a graphic in the show notes of just. It's just a sketch of how it was organized by all the different groups, a whole bunch of different countries that had women's suffrage, different states, different professions. And the whole point of the parade was to say, look, these are American women right here. This is half of the population. We are everywhere. You need to listen to us.
- [111:43]
Host 2
And that women participated in all the different spheres of American life. Colleges, professions, professional groups, different states, history. It was all there. There were 20 elaborate floats showing different vignettes from sweatshops to tableau, you know, more elevated tableau. But unfortunately, only the very, very first spectators in line got to see the whole, like the whole production as it had emerged from Alice's head. Because there were a quarter of a million people lining Pennsylvania Avenue to see this spectacle. And they did not stay on the sidewalks, did they?
- [112:30]
Host 1
No, they were held back. Held back by steel cables, were connected to stanchions all the way down the parade route. But that didn't hold the crowd back. And the crowd was people who wanted to see the suffrage parade, but it was also people who were anti suffrage. You know, they did not want any part of this. Women should be back in their Houses. They should not be voting. They should not be getting involved in politics. And I don't think it's sexist of me to say they were all men. And these men broke through. I mean, they were drunk. You know, they were breaking through these stanchions and breaking through these cables and just attacking the women, basically.
- [113:12]
Host 2
And they would yell and say sexual things to them, to manhandle them. The police, in their defense, there's a quarter of a million people and there's 950 policemen. But even when faced with an acute situation, a lot of the women reported the policeman saying something like, you wouldn't have been in this predicament if you'd been home where you belong.
- [113:37]
Host 1
And it only went like four blocks before all this mayhem began. And the women were all just, you know, joining arms and their section and just holding tight to try and go forward.
- [113:50]
Host 2
They, for an hour used their flags and, you know, the, the poles of the banners and then the ubiquitous hat pins to ward off attacks. They had to hold the center for almost an hour before some troops from the army arrived to clear the street.
- [114:09]
Host 1
There was a group of about 400 Boy Scouts who stepped in to do the right thing and tried to help the women.
- [114:17]
Host 2
So after the army came, the procession continued. I couldn't believe that, you know, some women had fled, and I don't blame them. That was a terrifying scenario to have happened. The procession ended at the steps of the Treasury Building and with a dramatic tableau. They called it, called Liberty and Her Attendance.
- [114:42]
Host 1
It would have been beautiful as a place to end. It represented was liberty, justice, charity, hope and peace were all represented by these costumed women on this tableau. All I could think of was the Gilmore Girls episode.
- [114:55]
Host 2
Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
- [114:57]
Host 1
Yeah. And they were just waiting. And it would have been so dramatic if the parade had actually been able to get to them, you know, in the way it had been designed.
- [115:07]
Host 2
You know, what was accomplished by this parade, in addition to the. The camaraderie and determination of the women who had participated in something larger than themselves and the realization that they had to make it happen themselves, you know, because look who was not going to help them. The law and the public, you know, was not for them necessarily, in a purely. In a purely surface way. Also, it accomplished great things. There are. Were more newspaper headlines about this parade than there were about Woodrow Wilson's inauguration.
- [115:47]
Host 1
The next day, as his train arrived from New Jersey, he was expecting all this fanfare. He was expecting this mob when he got off the train and he got off and it was a clear path to his car. You know, there's no people and he says we're all the people. And someone tells him they're on the avenue watching the suffragist parade.
- [116:11]
Host 2
How about it?
- [116:12]
Host 1
And this is probably a good time to end this particular episode. I'm sorry.
- [116:18]
Host 2
Alice Paul did some great things, didn't she? And I really feel a kinship with someone that would be such an autodidact, as she was not only a lifelong learner, but someone that absorbed things and reassembled concepts and then deployed them in a different way. We're already there and she's under 30 years of age, so tune in next time for part two of our coverage of Alice Paul. We will leave media until next time and just leave you with the following. Thanks for listening.
- [116:50]
Host 1
Bye.
- [116:51]
Host 2
If you liked what you heard today or learned a little something, please do us a favor and tell a few friends about us or leave a review for us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. The Tony Award winning musical Suffs is beginning its national tour in September 2025 and Alice Paul is the main character. If they're coming anywhere near you, I highly, highly recommend that you go and see it. Curiously, it is not coming to Kansas City or anywhere within striking distance of Kansas City and I do not know how one goes about requesting they add an extra stop on their tour. So if anyone knows how to do that or know someone with power in that way, please send me a message. You can go to suffsmusical.com for more information about that play. I really, really loved it. It is the middle of the night and I think I will remember to turn the Pinterest board on for Alice Paul. But if I don't, I will do it as soon as I remember tomorrow. And the song at the end is We Are Dynamite by Craig Reaver and Holman and we will see you next time.
- [118:15]
C
We're moving through the night like we're from a different star Flying over streets and our broken hearts but they can even touch us we found a different beat paradise is where waiting and we about to leave oh getting caught in the m is a man that never get out of defeating the fears and the doubts Ooh but we go then we run to the end and we run without shame we own the game and we dynamite ain't nobody.
- [119:22]
Host 2
We'Re from.
- [119:23]
C
A different time yeah we're of a different breed Cuz what we got is timeless we supersede and we holding the key yeah we're tired as can be we're rolling, we're rolling just like we please oh getting caught in the midst of some minute they never get out of they're feeding the fears and the die out Ooh but we go and we run to the end and we run without shame we own the game and we ride on the flames till the morning light baby Cuz we dynamite Ain't nobody going to hold us down Break all the rules Let them run and hide baby Cuz we DY gonna let the world know sa.