Alice Paul

This book is so good that other authors and academics often reference it. It provided us with great background and insight into Alice Paul and how/why she was able to accomplish what she did.

It does a great job of fleshing out the person behind the movement, which helped us humanize Alice in our musical.  

Alice Paul is nearly as obscure as Gandhi is famous, but not because she deserves to be. Paul led the American suffrage movement during its final decade, from 1910 to 1919, when the nineteenth amendment was finally passed. Claiming Power is the best biography out there about the underappreciated Paul.  Zahniser and Fry detail the life of this indefatigable activist, who changed the suffrage movement from an often “ladylike,” deferential campaign to an unapologetically confrontational crusade. My own book emerged from a desire to tell Paul’s story as an example of nonviolent activism at work, because she is rarely understood in this… show more.

Alice Paul deserves more recognition as a hero of the American suffrage movement. If she were a man there would be statues of her all over the place, and buildings and streets named after her, too. 

I like this book because it examines Paul’s early influences including her Quaker upbringing and her extensive graduate education. It also provides much more detail about her work with the militant suffragettes in England, where she got her start in the movement and developed the more confrontational style that blew up the more staid, incremental approach of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Exhaustively… show more.