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

Alice Paul joined the fray in 1910. Did she pick up where Stanton and Anthony left off? The answer to that question is not obvious: Almost anyone familiar with the suffrage movement has a picture of the kind of leadership Stanton and Anthony exercised, but most people know far less about Alice Paul, whose contributions are not prominently featured in the movement’s history. Investigation into Paul’s life and contributions reveals that she had a very different approach to the twentieth-century battle for the vote, that she was a radical by the standards of the NAWSA leaders who succeeded Stanton and Anthony, and that she devoted her life first to winning the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment and later to the effort to secure the enactment of the Equal Rights Amendment. For these reasons, any history of the women’s suffrage movement that fails to take account of Alice Paul and her organization, the NWP, is incomplete.

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

Objectives:

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

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

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

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

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