A Woman's Crusade

Alice Paul began her life as a quiet girl from a strict Quaker family in New Jersey. But as a young woman, an interest in social work brought her to England, where she apprenticed with the militant suffrage movement there, led by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters. Upon her return to the United States, Alice founded her own suffrage movement. Calling themselves 'Silent Sentinels,' she and her followers were the first protestors to picket the White House. Behind bars, they went on hunger strikes and were force-fed and brutalized. Years before Gandhi's campaign of nonviolent resistance, and decades before civil rights demonstrations, Alice Paul and her followers practiced peaceful civil disobedience. In 1920, a woman's right to vote finally became law. In celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Sentinels' great victory, here at last is the inspiring story of the woman who dedicated her life to winning universal suffrage for women and helped propel that dream to reality.