People Who Went To Penn: Alice Paul

Is the end of the semester grind wearing you down? Are you looking for a motivational boost to carry you through the six days until Thanksgivukkah? Look no further than Alice Paul, a Penn alum and suffragist leader who took badassery to another level.

A literal Quaker turned Quaker, Paul came to Penn in 1905 and earned an M.A. in Sociology and a Ph.D in Economics. Before coming to Penn, Alice took some time off to go to England and like, discover herself. She ended up joining a militant suffragette movement, personally breaking more than forty-eight windows and getting arrested several times—just some typical semester abroad shenanigans.

When she returned to the States, Paul brought that equal-rights fervor with her, joining the National American Women’s Suffrage Association, until she decided that ish wasn’t for her and started her own party—the National Women’s Party, holla. Paul and other party members (party animals?) picketed the Wilson administration for a national amendment for women’s suffrage, leading to their arrest. In prison, the suffragists were beaten, thrown in rat-infested cells, and force-fed to end their hunger strikes. Prison officials even moved Paul to a sanitarium in hopes of getting her declared insane. Still, Paul just brushed that dirt off her shoulda and, upon her release, worked for the passing of the 19^th Amendment.

And then, y’know, spent the rest of her life tirelessly fighting for women’s rights in America and around the globe: proposing what would later become the Equal Rights Amendment, founding the World Women’s Party, establishing the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, and, oh yeah, earning three law degrees. Snaps to you, Alice. Mad snaps.