April 14, 2017 Hello , Imagine devoting your entire adult life to a cause, living more than 90-years, and dying with unfinished
business.
Alice Paul believed that men and women should be equal partners in society, and she was behind most 20th Century efforts for women's rights in the United States, including women's right to vote.
Now, close to 100 years after Alice Paul started the fight for
an Equal Rights Amendment, women in the U.S. are still second class citizens under the law. (See video below!)
Alice Paul Gave Her All
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In August 1917, Alice Paul and nine other suffragists were arrested for protesting in front of the White House. She did not go quietly, believing that equal rights for women would not be gained without extreme
measures.
Confined behind bars, her only power was refusing to eat. She had resorted to hunger strikes before when arrested in England.
When the forcible feeding was ordered I was taken from my bed, carried to another room and forced into a chair,
bound with sheets and sat upon bodily by a fat murderer, whose duty it was to keep me still. Then the prison doctor, assisted by two woman attendants, placed a rubber tube up my nostrils and pumped liquid food through it into the stomach. Twice a day for a month, from November 1 to December 1, this was done. ~Alice Paul
Talks, Philadelphia Tribune, January 1910.
A new biography of Alice Paul brings the story of this less-well-known suffragist to teenagers.
She certainly deserves our attention!
Author Deborah Kops agreed to talk with me about Alice's passion and determination.
Deborah Kops: I am awed by Paul’s courage and her willingness to risk her life to help women win the vote. Her health was fragile, and she jeopardized it on a regular basis when she was young.
Paul went on her longest hunger strike, which lasted three weeks, in 1917, when she was in jail in Washington, D.C. (she went on three hunger strikes years before in the UK).
For most of that time, she was force fed, which is very
painful. A hunger strike was her only means of fighting her imprisonment and reminding the public that women wanted the ballot. She and the
other Woman’s Party members who went without food (more than twenty) got plenty of coverage in newspapers around the country, which embarrassed Woodrow Wilson. Less than two months after Paul’s release, Wilson finally announced his support for the woman suffrage amendment. The amendment was ratified August 18,
1920. Above: Fellow Suffragists protesting Alice Paul's arrest and incarceration for picketing the White House. Photo courtesy of the Historic National Women's Party, Sewell-Belmont House and Museum, Washington
D.C.
Deborah, this book seems personal to you. (Author pictured below) I became a feminist during the women’s movement of the late sixties and early seventies, which historians call the second wave. And I assumed that the Equal Rights Amendment, which we were fighting for, was written in the sixties.
I learned that the amendment was Alice Paul’s idea and that she wrote it in 1923!
A century later, when Hillary Clinton made her acceptance speech as the first woman nominated by a major political party for the presidency, I was very touched to see her wearing white, the color that suffragists often wore beneath their sashes.
When I joined the Women’s March in Boston in January, I was very proud to wear a sash with the National Woman’s Party colors—purple, white, and gold—over my jacket.
Thank you for taking time for this interview, Deborah, and for writing about this
courageous woman!
You can see all of Deborah Kops books at her website here, including The Great Molasses Flood: Boston, 1919 which Kirkus Reviews calls A fascinating account of a truly bizarre
disaster.
Back to the Equal Rights Amendment. If you know anyone living in the states colored yellow below...ask them if they know their state has not ratified the ERA. Then check out the video below (it's less than two minutes long). Feel free to forward this newsletter. Thanks www.equalrightsamendment.org for the map.
Just three weeks ago Nevada became the 36th state to ratify the ERA (45 years to the day after Congress passed it). This year ERA bills have been introduced in the legislatures of Arizona, Florida, Illinois,
North Carolina, Utah, and Virginia.
In choosing books for the annual list, reviewers consider literary
quality and excellence of presentation as well as the potential emotional impact of the books on young readers. Nonfiction titles are further evaluated for accuracy and clarity.
FANNIE NEVER FLINCHED was selected in the History category for readers age 9-12. I had an inspiring time last weekend visiting Moscow, Idaho, for a workshop where writers evaluated the first pages of their manuscript.
Thanks to everyone for being brave and reading your work aloud, and allowing us all to offer feedback.
And a huge thanks to BookPeople of Moscow for giving us space to meet and yummy snacks, plus hosting me for a program and book-signing. If you want an alternative to ordering books on Amazon, you can order from independent
bookstores like BookPeople.
The store is hosting New York Best-Selling Author N.D. Wilson, Monday, April 17th at 6pm. Wilson's latest book, Outlaws of Time: The Song of Glory and Ghost is the second book in a new fantasy-adventure middle grade trilogy. Until next week... Have you read a great book? Tell me about it. Have a burning question? Let me know.
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