Alice Paul and the Fight for Women’s Rights: From the Vote to the Equal Rights Amendment

Born in 1885, 65 years after Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul may be a lesser-known warrior for women’s suffrage but, as Kops unequivocally reveals in this thorough biography, she was no less passionate or determined. After recapping Paul’s Quaker childhood in New Jersey and her college years at Swarthmore, Kops (The Great Molasses Flood: Boston, 1919) steps up the pace as she follows Paul to London. There the gutsy Paul studied social activism, joined the ranks of protesting suffragettes, and was jailed for the first of many times. Her zeal for women’s voting rights ignited after she settled in Washington, D.C., where the suffrage campaign “was Alice Paul’s life” and “she fired on all four cylinders.” The author convincingly recreates charged episodes as Paul and her colleagues picketed Woodrow Wilson’s White House and endured unlawful arrests, sentences in jails and workhouses, and hunger strikes—all building to the eventual passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Archival photos and quotes culled from Paul’s correspondence, her contemporaries’ observations, and the press further illuminate the life of this indefatigable crusader. Ages 11–up. Agent: Stephen Fraser, Jennifer De Chiara Literary. (Feb.)