Alice Paul (January 11, 1885 – July 9, 1977) was an American suffragist, feminist, and women’s rights activist, and one of the main leaders and strategists of the 1910s campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits sex discrimination in the right to vote.
Along with Lucy Burns and others, Paul strategized events, such as the Woman Suffrage Procession and the Silent Sentinels, which were part of the successful campaign that resulted in its passage in 1920.
After 1920, Paul spent a half century as leader of the National Woman’s Party, which fought for her Equal Rights Amendment to secure constitutional equality for women. She won a large degree of success with the inclusion of women as a group protected against discrimination by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Alice Paul insisted that her National Woman’s Party focus on the legal status of all women and resisted calls to address issues like birth control.
