Wendy C.:	Good afternoon, thank you all for coming. This event is going to be recorded for the college website and archive, so I just want you to know that's going to be happening. I'm Wendy Chmielewski, the curator of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection and also a member of the Peace and Conflict studies program here at Swarthmore. 
	First I'd like to thank our co-sponsors of this event. The Peace and Conflict studies program, the Presidents office, the Swarthmore College Peach Collection, Friends Historical Library, The History Department, Political Science Department, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Women's Resource Center, The Lang Center for Social Responsibility, and the English Literature Department. Thanks to everybody there. Yay!
	Today's talk is one of the first events in honor of the celebration of the sesquicentennial of the college, and we're especially pleased to be part of this noting the contributions of two Swarthmore College alumni to the cause of human rights. Mable Vernon and Alice Paul, whose pictures you'll see here, and hear more about today. I also want to mention that September 21st, this Saturday, is the 31st International Day of Peace, is recognized by all United Nations member states, and the day is dedicated to world peace and the absence of war and violence. 
	This talk is also officially part of the Philadelphia city-wide celebration of Peace Day events, and if you want to know more about these events, you can go to the website peacedayphilly.org. 
	Okay, now ... When I was growing up, and going to school in the 1960s and early 1970s, we barely learned about the long movement for women rights in the United States. Maybe there was one, or two paragraphs, in our history text books mentioning two of the early movement leaders Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth K. D. Stanton. But the story ended rather quickly with just those couple of paragraphs, with  a ratification of the 19th amendment of the Constitution in August of 1920, and that's the amendment that gave women all over the United States the right to vote. 
	We certainly didn't learn that the movement for women's rights, for the right to vote, to be elected to office, to own property, to make contracts, to sit on juries, the right to have an equal education and equal pay, or freedom from domestic or gender based violence, has lasted for the entire history of the nation. There were no comparisons with the heroes of the American revolution, or the glorious history of rights demanded by the American colonists in the early years of the Republic, when the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written and debated. This, despite the fast Stanton and Lucretia Mott one of the founders of Swarthmore College, and their colleagues who organized the first women's rights convention in 1848, based their Declaration of Sentiments on the Declaration of Independence, demanding for all women the rights enjoyed by male citizens. We did not learn about the determination, dedication, resolve, courage and political savvy of hundreds of thousands of women of all colors, ethnicities and economic backgrounds across the Untied States who fought, and continue to fight, for their rights. We were told that these women were ridiculous, aggressive, strident, unfeminine, ugly, were only involved in the fight for their rights because they weren't married, or hen picked their husbands, or didn't have children, or didn't stay home, or wanted to push themselves into male preserves. 
	I seem to remember is those long ago textbooks that we did learn about Carrie Nation, a famous leader of the temperance movement and a supporter of prohibition laws against the consumption of alcohol. She was portrayed as dangerous, destroying barrels of alcohol with her ax in the streets. Old, wrinkled and spoiling male fun in bars and saloons, as if this was what happened if women were allowed a role in determining social and public policy, that it would lead to violent, disruptive behavior. We wouldn't want to be like those women, would we? We can hope that our national understanding of the movement for women's civil rights has changed since the middle of the last century, when the first histories of this movement were being written, but I wonder. How many of us in the United States today celebrate, or even know, key figures or events in this long fight? 
	Our speaker today, Mary Walton, has written a wonderful book about some of these women, Alice Paul and Mable Vernon, their colleagues of the National Women's Party, and the final years of the battle for women's suffrage nearly a century ago. But even relatively recently, as Mary relates in the authors note in her book, "A Woman's Crusade". Here it is, there will be copies you can get later and buy later and have signed by the author. She relates that her literary agent told her that women's history doesn't sell. Fortunately, Mary was not deterred by this pronouncement, and her agent was able to sell the book after all and to a major publisher, Paul Grave McMillan at that. "A Women's Crusade" has received rave reviews from readers, specialists, and the general public alike. 
	After graduation from Harvard University and a turn at social work and community organizing, Mary Walton began her journalism career as a reporter at the Charleston West Virginia Gazette. She worked for twenty years as a newspaper reporter for the Philadelphia Enquirer, and has also written for The New York Times, Washingtonian, The Washington Monthly, and American Journalism Review. She is also the author of several other books, including "For Love of Money" and "Car: A Drama of the American Workplace". Mary writes that as a girl, she was inspired by Brenda Star, the glamorous journalist portrayed in the comic strip of the same name, and I would guess she would might now add Alice Paul and Mable Vernon as sources of inspiration as well. Please welcome, Mary Walton. 
Mary Walton:	Thank you Wendy for that gracious introduction, and for setting the stage so well for when it comes to Alice Paul and Mable Vernon. My appreciation also to Lee Smithy for the invitation to be here, I'm really honored. It is a privilege to be here on the eve of Swarthmore's sesquicentennial. 150 years of excellence in education, and to who are here, I say carry on and congratulations. Is Anna Everds here? I'd like to thank Anna Everds, who attended to all the little details. Actually I'm losing ... Is this ... Wave if you can't hear me and I'll speak more loudly ... Tended to all the little details that make an event like this possible. Is this on to? Oh I think it's on too, okay good. Okay.
	I can think of no more appropriate way to start off your sesquicentennial, then with a talk about these two women, early graduates and very distinguished. Alice Paul was the leader of the militant wing of the women's suffrage movement, from 1913-1920. She fought for an annulment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the country over the vote. This was the quintessential battle of one person against the odds. It was David against Goliath, it was the Rocky story. Alice took on the President of the United States, and the United States Congress, but in the tactics she developed and deployed, she was more than just a fighter for suffrage, she was a pioneer in non-violent resistance. She was to suffrage what Gandhi was to Indian independence, what Martin Luther King was to civil rights. Mable Vernon was her most trusted organizer. Mable was funny, Mable was smart, Mable was organized, very productive, and most importantly, Mable was an extremely talented public speaker. This made her invaluable to Alice, whether she was talking on a street corner in Washington, or out west holding forth from a town hall in Wyoming.
	Those were these two wonderful women, that come to Swarthmore right? They come to Swarthmore, you recognize this building I'm sure. This was Swarthmore. It was for ordain that Alice would come to Swarthmore, her grandfather was instrumental in raising money for the college, her mother had, Tacie Paul, had come to Swarthmore. Never graduated because she got married, and in those days you couldn't continue if you were married. The family was friends with Lucretia Mott, the great abolitionist and suffragist and Swarthmore founder. More to the point, Swarthmore was co-educational. The other Quaker college in the area, Haverford, was not. But even though one of the founding principals was co-education, there were limits as I'll read you.
	The Quaker's viewed Swarthmore as an experiment to prove what has never yet been fully proven, that it is feasible and desirable to give to women equal educational facilities with men. It is one thing to provide both sexes with an education however, and another to trust them with each other. The administration took the in loco parentis role to heart, and fired the first president for being to soft on issues of moral propriety. His successor, Edward Hixon Gill was famous for his 100 rules, of which perhaps the most famous of all was that "students of the two sexes, except brothers and sisters, shall not walk together upon the grounds of the college, nor in the neighborhood, nor to or from the railroad station or the skating grounds. They shall not post upon the same sled."
	Alice and Mable meet of course at Swarthmore, Alice gets here first, arrives in 1901 at the age of 16. She's graduated from Moorestown Friends. Mable, though older, comes later. She's a graduate of Willington Friends. Alice is eighth generation Quaker, Mable we know is Quaker on her fathers side but raised as a Presbyterian. Well came a time when Alice had to deliver a speech in a college wide competition. Alice was terrified of public speaking, Mable by now had quickly established a reputation as being possibly the best orator on the Swarthmore campus. So Alice goes to Mabel and asks Mabel to coach her, invites her to walk along Crum Creek together, where she makes this plea. Mabel says yes, and Mabel does coach her. 
	Mabel goes on to win first prize, she talks about racial equality. Alice makes it into the finals and survives, but does not win a prize. And again, when Alice graduates she is given great honor, she is named Ivy Poet or Poetess. She has to write a poem, no problem there, and deliver it at graduation. Once again, she goes to Mabel. And I've said, "Now will you train me so I can deliver my poem? So she undertook very religiously to have me practice and practice and practice my poem, so when the day came, I think she had gotten me up to the point where probably people could hear me, and this great audience was there, and I gave my little Ivy poem." 
	Mabel struck a blow for suffrage before she graduated on the Portrait of Lucretia Mott that hung in the girls parlor, Mabel thought the frame had gotten shabby so she took it upon herself to take down the portrait, take it in to Philadelphia, have it reframed. We think this is the portrait that hangs in the Franks Historical Library, so if you're in there and you see it, give a little nod of thanks to Mabel Vernon for rescuing it. 
	Alice is raised on this farm in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. Her father was a banker but also a gentleman farmer, had the usual farm animals. You can see sheep up on the lawn. She would have had to shoo them away because she liked to play tennis on that lawn. She loved that big veranda, she liked to read out there, play checkers with her siblings. She was the oldest of four children, she had a sister and two brothers. This was a strict Quaker household, there was no music in this home. The Quaker's believed that music was at best a distraction, at the worst quite possibly dangerous, and Alice said she never heard so much as a hymn until she went to Swarthmore. She was raised with good Quaker values. Someone said to me, are there any other kind? And that meant, above all, a belief in absolute equality regardless of gender, regardless of race, regardless of social standing. 
	The first Quaker's, in 17th century England, refused to remove their hats in the presence of authority, because if you believe everyone is equal, no one is better than anyone else. So they wouldn't take off their hats to royalty, or officials, and for this they went to jail. Alice would have known this history very well. She attended Quaker schools all her life, as I said Moorestown Friends, and she went to school up the road in Moorestown, New Jersey. She rode a horse to school. This was not something that proper young ladies did in those days, and she rode that horse bareback, which really scandalized people. But then Alice was never quite a proper young lady.
	She graduates from Swarthmore 1905, doesn't know what to do with herself. Options for women are limited, she can be a nurse, she can be a teacher. Mable Vernon becomes a teacher, but a new profession has opened up, the professional social work. Here to, for, done by volunteers. The New York School of Philanthropy was opened, and that's actually giving training in social work. So Alice goes off to New York, she lives in a settlement house on the lower east side in a largely Jewish neighborhood, and it's here where she becomes acquainted first hand with the problems women have in trying to take care of their families. Poor women, problems of health care, housing, hunger and Alice does what she can to help, but she's not impressed with social work because it doesn't really change anything, her word. Women of course couldn't vote, they couldn't lobby for change from legislators. They had no power. 
	Alice returns to Pennsylvania, she goes to the University of Pennsylvania, gets her masters degree in sociology, and she goes off to England to continue her studies. It is in England that she becomes associated with the militant suffragettes, the Women's Social and Political Union founded by this woman Emmeline Pankhurst. Emmeline has just been arrested, trying to storm the gates of parliament to present a petition for suffrage. Women couldn't even get a hearing from parliament. They couldn't speak at political meetings, so they did speak at political meetings, even Alice. Alice would tell the story on herself years later, that she's at a meeting and she's waiting her turn to speak, terrified. And one by one, the speakers ahead of her get up, start to talk, and they're arrested. It dawns on her, she's going to be arrested. She isn't going to have to speak after all. Great feeling of relief! And she did speak, and she was arrested. She was arrested seven times this year, 1909, and she goes to jail three times. 
	Toward the end of that year, women are asking to be treated as political prisoners as men are. This means they can get mail, read newspapers, have visitors, they're turned down. So in protest, they go on hunger strikes. Well, the authorities don't want to see harm come to these women, they don't want to see them suffer, so they undertake to feed them. This woman's being held down, a tube goes ... from the funnel, the tube goes into her nostrils, actually sometimes it went into the stomach. It was more painful when it went into the nostrils. The food was generally raw eggs, liquid milk, but let me leave you Alice's description. 
	Twice daily she was plucked form her cell, wrapped in blankets, and taken to a chair in another cell. A heavy woman, who she was certain must be the prisons largest matron, straddled her across the waist and leaned forward, pinning her shoulders down. Two other matrons sat on either side, holding down her arms. Behind her stood a doctor, as she would later relate, who would pull my head back until it was parallel with the ground. He held it in this position by means of a towel, drawn tightly around the throat, and when I tried to move, he drew the towel to tight that it compressed the windpipe and made it almost impossible to breathe. With his other hand, he held my chin [inaudible 00:21:48] position. A second doctor pushed one end of a five foot long tube into her nostril, so hard that it felt as if he were driving a stake into the ground. Once the tube had reached her stomach, a funnel was positioned at the top, and milk and liquid food poured through. 
	In subsequent feedings, more often than not, the tube would not reach it's destination on the first try. In those cases, the doctor pulled it out, smeared it with the grease, and tried the other nostril. Three times the tube went astray, and poked out through her mouth. Alice clamped her teeth down tightly, leaving the team no alternative but to pry her mouth open. While the tube is going through the nasal passage, it is exceedingly painful and only less so as it is being withdrawn. I never went through it without the tears streaming down my face. 
	By the end of that year, Alice decided that she had done enough for suffrage, she would come back to the United States and pursue her career and academia, wanted to be a academic. She comes back, it's the beginning of 1910, here she is aboard ship arriving. She enrolls at the University of Pennsylvania to continue her studies. 
	Let me show you another poster. This was a poster shown at the 1893 World's Fair, caused quite a store. Upper left language of the day was an idiot, upper right a convict, bottom right a lunatic, bottom right an Indian. In the middle, a woman. This is no, oh but what do you think these people had in common? Anybody? They can't vote, exactly. And this is no ordinary woman plucked off the street, this is Francis Willard, the head of the women Christian Temperance Union. The WCTU was very much in favor of suffrage. Well, the liquor lobby fearing the temperance fighters were lobbying for prohibition, the liquor lobby doesn't want to see women vote, knowing they'll vote for prohibition. So whenever there's an election in a state, a vote on suffrage, the liquor lobby pours vast sums of money to fight it. This are the distilleries, the breweries, the farmers who grow hops, the bars, the people who like to drink. And the approach to suffrage is precisely to go state by state by state at this time. 
	At the time, this poster, 1983 women could vote in just two states, Wyoming and Colorado. When Alice gets back, it's four states, they're all out west. Another problem with the state by state approach, was that it took a vote by the state legislature to get the measure of the ballot for a referendum. All men, and then the voters would vote, all men. Not really eager to give up power. So it was very slow going. Alice has a turn in Pennsylvania organizing, even though she's done with suffrage, she can't stay away. She recruits a women named Lucy Burns, who she had met in England. They had been arrested together. Lucy's from Brooklyn, she has fiery red hair, a temperance to match, and Lucy comes back to help Alice in Philadelphia, and they organize the first street corner campaign. But Alice thinks it would be more effective to have a federal amendment, that would give women the country over the vote. That it would be faster, more efficient. This annulment is not new, it's been around since 1887, voted on once in the Senate, never voted on again. 
	In 1912, the big national organization, suffrage organization, the day is meeting in Philadelphia. Alice goes to the leaders and said, if you will put me in charge, I will take over the campaign for the federal amendment. They said okay, two conditions. You have to raise your own money, you have to recruit your own supporters. Alice accepts the challenge, Lucy agrees to help. Alice goes off to Washington, beginning of 1913, she rents this headquarters on F Street. F Street was the fashionable shopping street, so if women were parading up and down in their finery, maybe on their way to the great department store Woodward and Lothrop. The advice went, don't get to close to that open doorway, or you're going to be pulled in and forced to do some volunteer work. 
	There was plenty to do. Alice's first plan is to hold, to organize a parade, a suffrage parade in Washington to take place on the day before Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated, March 4th in those days and the parade will be on March 3rd. It's gonna be on Pennsylvania Avenue, the great ceremonial thorough fair, suites from the White House to the Capital. But first, she needs a permit. The gentleman on the right, the police commissioner Richard Sylvester, refuses. He says there are going to be too many people in town on March 3rd. Well yeah, that's the reason. Furthermore, these are going to be Southern Democrats up to cheer one of their own, Wilson from Virginia. And they're going to be drinking. And Pennsylvania Avenue is too close to the Bowie District, home of bars and brothels. They're gonna be celebrating in there. 
	Well, Alice doesn't take no for an answer. She works the phone, believe me she would have loved social media. She has the phone, and she rallies the wives of prominent Washingtonians, congressman, military men. She gets them behind her, and she goes to the press. Don't ask me how a young Quaker girl, Alice is 28 from Mouth Laurel, New Jersey, knows how to work the press. But Alice was a public relations genius, and she wore Sylvester down. He caves in, she gets the day, she gets the route. 
	This was the first real social protest parade in Washington. There had been, 1894, some maybe 500 unemployed men had marched up Pennsylvania Avenue in a demonstration. It did not go well. The leaders were arrested on the Capital lawn for trespassing. Alice's parade is just a little different. Two dozen horse drawn floats, nine bands, four mounted brigades, three Harolds with trumpets, and at least 5,000 women, though possible as many as 8,000, so many in any case that the organizers lost count. Caps and capes from dark to light came the social workers, teachers, business women and librarians. In three shades of rose, the artists, actresses, and musicians. On and on, a glorious cavalcade of color. Oh, just about this float? I call you attention to the word demand. Women didn't demand in those days. Women asked politely, they pleaded, demand was an incendiary word, and she was putting Wilson on notice that the women expected results from his administration.
	So on with the parade, it's orderly, four abreast, but then what happens? Turns out, Sylvester was right. The crowd broke through steel cables, they spilled into the path of the parade. They brought it to a halt, the men jeered at the women, they spit at them. They threw lighted cigarettes at them, they used canes to knock off their hats, to lift the skirts of woman on the floats. And the police, the police who were supposed to keep order, turned their backs on the parade and they were laughing like it was some kind of joke. One told the woman, "If you hadn't have come out today, this never would have happened." As one of Alice's supporters said, "I did not know men could be such fiends." Well, it took a call to the cavalry across the river to Fort Myers to come galloping to the rescue, and tore a path for the parade.
	You would think Alice would have been dismayed at what had happened to their beautiful parade, but she saw that this, on the front pages of newspapers across America, was a better story than her parade would ever have been. She wrote a supporter, this mistreatment by the police was probably the best thing that could ever have happened to us, as it aroused a great deal of public indignation and sympathy. So she thinks suffrage is right around the corner, but she knows it's going to take some work and she needs an organization. Her thoughts turn to her old friend Mable Vernon. Mable is happily teaching German and Latin I think at Radnor High school, and Alice writes her to come to Washington, she has a job for her as an organizer. She writes Mabel, "I do hope very much that you would take up this work and let school teaching go. There are plenty of people to teach school." That was Alice, nothing was more important than suffrage. And Mabel does take the job, and soon Mabel is speaking on street corners. 
	This in 1913 into 1914, she and other young women are sent out west. Alice organizes two political campaigns, 1914 and 1916, she wants to harness the votes of women out west, and by now there's about ten states where women can vote, but not many women ... But Alice at least wants to send a signal to the democrats in Congress, who are the ones holding up the vote, the democrats. The Southern Democrats. The Southern Democrats don't want to see their women vote, indulging in the messy business of politics. They belong at home with the family. More than that, the Southern democrats don't want to see black women voting. Black men have had the vote since shortly after the civil war under the 15th Amendment, they don't want to see the size of the black electorate doubled, and they're very open about that. 
	These are busy years, rallies, lobbying, all kinds of activity. Oops, just want to tell you one more thing about Mabel. Mabel loved political stunts, and she started to really dog Wilson in 1916, and interrupt his speeches and was really beginning to make a name for herself in that regard, but probably the most notorious episode was ... Wilson was reelected in 1916, so he's giving his first speech to Congress after his reelection, and Mabel and Lucy Burns and three other women want to be there, in the audience. They get tickets from friendly Congressmen, they arrive really early to get good seats. Mabel is quite visibly pregnant, big brown coat. So a guard makes sure that they're sitting in the front row, in the very best seats of the balcony. So there they are, Wilson starts his speech, and they're waiting for Wilson to talk about voting rights for Puerto Rican men. That's the cue. When he begins, Mabel spreads open this voluminous coat, they spread out a banner, and they drape it over the balcony, and there's all this commotion and Congressmen. Wilson looks up to see "Mr. President, how long will women wait? Mr. President, what will you do for women's suffrage?" 
	He goes right back to reading his speech. A page jumps up, and he pulls down the banner. Mabel would always regret that the cords on the banner were so long, because she said "If it hadn't been for those long tapes, they could never have gotten it until the President had finished his speech." But here's this picture was taken right after the speech. Yes, that's Mabel in the middle, she's pretty happy about the way it went down. The Associated Press calls this the first organized show of militancy in the nations capital. 
	In 1917, the women however have to face the fact that they haven't accomplished much. Something new is needed. Some way to really focus on Wilson, whose the head of the Democratic party, to bring those stubborn Democrats around. Wilson takes the position that it's the states rights issue. Each state can determine it's course. There'd been many meetings with Wilson, and he sticks to that line, he'll have it no other way. 
	On January 10th, 1917, a dozen women march out across Lafayette Square, and they take up position at either side of the gates of the White House. They just hold up banners, they don't speak, they don't chant, and they don't move. Well Wilson is walking through, ignoring the women, but I assure you the women were not ignored. People came down to see these curious women. These weren't the kind of women you would expect to be on a picket line. Well bred, well dressed, professional, wives of professionals, college women. They were quite the curiosity, and Wilson might ignore them but the press did not. The press was generally pretty hostile, the women called themselves "Silent Sentinels". The New York Times called them silly, silent and offensive. 
	Tacie Paul, Alice's mother, writes her, "Dear Alice. I wish to make a protest against the methods you are adopting in annoying the President. Surely the Congressional reunion or organization, will not gain converts by such undignified actions. I hope the will call it off." Alice does not call it off, they picketed into the cold winter. I always, in this photo, always look at their feet. Thin leather shoes, no nice warm Ugg boots. They picket in all kinds of weather. They picket into the hot summer, there's Mabel Vernon picketing. Notice though that she's flanked by this large crowd, and not a particularly friendly crowd. A male crowd. 
	Well, by summer 1917, we're at war in Europe. Suddenly these women who were regarded as a nuisance, offensive, or something more. They're picketing a sitting president, they're disloyal, and maybe even they're traitors. One sign, because now there signs are growing more strident, this was called the Russian banner. We were trying to get Russia, which had had it's revolution to come into the side of the allies, and two envoys were coming to Russia that day, and the women come out with this sign and it says "President Wilson and envoy route are deceiving Russia, they say we are a democracy, help us win a World War so that democracies may survive. We the women of America, tell you that America is not a democracy. 20 million American women are denied the right to vote. President Wilson is the chief opponent of their national enfranchisement." They are attacking Wilson, the President who would make a world safe for democracy. They have gone too far. 
	Mobs gather, objects are thrown at the women, their banners are torn down from their posts, the women are hurled to the ground. This goes on, not once, but on a daily basis. Well clearly, action has to be taken against the perpetrators. That would be the women. They are arrested, here are two of the suffragettes being hauled off to police courts. But now the authorities, there's the matron in the middle. Now the authorities have a problem with what to charge them with. They were on that very wide White House sidewalk, not taking up much space.
	They are charged with obstruction of traffic. It's a misdemeanor, the first sentences are very light, but the women continue, they come out of jail ... Oh, and Mabel was one of the first to be arrested, and the story about her is she gets to district jail, and she spies an organ. So she asks the warden, well could I play a hymn, and the warden sees nothing wrong with that, so she plays "God be with you 'til we meet again." Then she plays another hymn, and another hymn, and then she gives a rousing speech about suffrage. All the female prisoners are there. A prisoner is heard by a reporter to say "Well I can tell you one thing, when we get the vote, we're really gonna make the men suffer."
	I loved Mabel, everybody loved Mabel. When the women come out of prison, they go right back on the picket line. Now they're repeat offenders, and there sentences grow longer. The leaders are told they'll get six months. They do get six months. Here's Lucy Burns, six months. Alice is told, you're going to get six months, your leaders, and she goes right back out with a banner. You can't read it, but it says "The time has come to either conquer or summit. There is but one choice. We have made it." She somehow manages to pull seven months, as she had in England, and as in England she asked to be treated as a political prisoner. Denied, goes on a hunger strike, she and her followers are once again force fed, knowing full well knowing what was in store for them. 
	She says though, it's even worse than in England. In England they fed you twice a day, here it's three times a day. The treatment of the women is particularly bad in a Maryland workhouse where they'd sent ... It's called Occoquan. The food is so awful. Soup, oatmeal with worms floating in it, they made a game out of counting the worms, 15 in one meal. Dried cornbread, rotten vegetables, only water to drink. On one particular night, in November, and things are really kind of going toward an end, thirty women are arrested and sent to Occoquan. They refused to give their names. The warden orders them thrown into the men's punishment cells, tobacco spit on the floor, cold stone floors. Linens on these bare cots, these filthy linens never washed. Vermin, rats, flies, the warden tells them they cannot speak. Lucy Burns calls out to her fellow prisoners to see if they're safe, and he orders her handcuffed to her cell. She spend much of the night like this. 
	Well, the press knew about these conditions and did not report them. They had made an agreement with the Wilson administration not to describe the treatment of the suffrages, but word leaked out, and a socialist newspaper in New York got hold of this information and published it. This wave of sympathy grew for women throughout the country, because even if you disagreed with the picketing, many did, you had to recognize these women were brave and many thought the cause to be just. Pressure builds on Wilson to do something, and at the same time the National, the big suffrage organization, has not been idle. In 1917 of that same year, November, New York gets the vote. Suddenly, fifty congressmen have to vote for suffrage or they're not going to be reelected. 
	Remaining congressmen are very worried. They go to Wilson, what should we do? And Wilson changes his mind. Oh, it's not states rights, this is a federal amendment, it's really a national issue. Other great democracies are given them the vote, Canada, England, how can we be left behind? He tells them to vote for suffrage, even so, it takes another year and a half before the amendment passes both houses of Congress, and then it has to be ratified. Ratified by three quarters of the states, thirty-six states, this is not a foregone conclusion, you're never gonna get the south. A lot of governors won't call the state legislators, which met only, many of them, only every other year into session, and it's very slow going. 
	Alice has the ratification banner, she sows on a star for every state that ratifies, and by the summer of 1920, they've got 35 states, they need 36, one more. It comes down to Tennessee. Well Tennessee is a border state, Tennessee also has a very powerful liquor lobby, and even though the 18th Amendment has passed for prohibition, the liquor lobby wants to reverse it so they're still opposed to suffrage and they pour money into Tennessee. The state senate passes it, but the legislature it tied, 48 to 48, and we knows this because there's a motion to table, and there's that tie vote on the motion to table. Well, even with the tie vote, the ratification can go to a vote, but if it doesn't pass, if there's no majority, it's lost. So it's not looking good.
	They go down the roll, and they get to the B's, and they get to the youngest member of the legislature, Harry Burn. Harry had voted for the motion to table, so he's gonna vote against the amendment itself. But he doesn't. He raises his hand and votes "I", and the place goes wild! The women know they've won, and they sing and they hug each other, and they hug the legislators, and they're just overjoyed as you can imagine. Word travels back to Washington, Alice takes that ratification banner and drapes it over the railing of suffrage head quarters, her volunteers are applauding, and Harry Burn is asked "Well, why did you change your mind?" He says, "Well, I got a note from my mother." True story! She wrote "Hurrah, and vote for suffrage, and don't keep them in doubt." He says, "A boy should always listen to what his mother says."
	A great victory, Alice votes in the election of 1920. She votes an absentee ballot, that's Alice on the right, taking her oath as one of her supporters and one of the first, if not the first, female notary republics. A great moment for them both. This is not the end of Alice's battle however, she sees that the battle ahead is a legal one, that many laws in the states, federal laws as well, that discriminate against women, and so she decided she needs a law degree. Being Alice, she gets her bachelors, masters and doctorate of laws and she goes to work on that legislation. She write the ERA, and it's introduced in 1923, and every year thereafter. She's instrumental in getting language into treaties, international treaties with the United Nations Charter. She plays a role in the 1964 civil rights act, guaranteeing gender equality and employment, so these are not idle years for Alice. 
	By old age ... Her fame was nothing like it was when she was always on the front pages of newspapers across America, and by old age she's fallen into obscurity and poverty. But then comes the second wave feminists, who rediscover Alice. They find her in a nursing home in Mouth Laurel, New Jersey. They come to sit at her knees, and talk to her, and listen to the wisdom she has to offer. Alice lives to be 92, she dies in 1977. Let us not forget Mabel Vernon. Mabel Vernon too went back to school, got a degree in political science from Columbia in 1923, worked for the ERA until 1930 and then she decided that peace and disarmament and she enlisted in the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and pursued those issues until her death. The papers are here at Swarthmore. Two just such remarkable women. 
	I told you at the outset that Alice was a leader in non-violent resistance, and I want to come back to that. If you think about that parade, the first social protest parade in Washington, the first people to ever picket the White House. Those charges of obstruction of justice thrown out by a federal appeals court. Permits given that were never given before the demonstrate in public places. Alice and her followers really opened up Washington to generations of protestors to come. Civil rights demonstrators, Vietnam war demonstrators, tea party protestors, all really owe a vote of thanks to Alice Paul because she was there first. 
	I always like to close with a quote from Gandhi, talking about movements on non-violent resistance, and he once famously said "First, they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win." Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you Alice Paul. My goodness! Thank you ...