Alice Paul
1885-1977
Co-founder of the National Woman's Party and Suffragist
 
Written and Performed by: Molly Jackman
Setting: Washington, D.C., 1917

Alice Paul stands outside the White House. It is the day after her release from prison and the National Woman’s Party has called on her to speak at a press conference. She looks exhausted, thin, and beaten, but certainly not defeated. She stands powerfully in front of the reporters. 


President Wilson seems to have forgotten that before I am a suffragist, before I am a woman, I am a person. I am an American. The conditions we survived in Occoquan were unacceptable, but I would go through it all again if it means that you will finally pay attention, that you will finally open your eyes to women’s suffrage. 

While in London in 1910, I sold magazines for the suffrage movement in Britain. I endured being spit on, called names, having things thrown at me. I remember thinking to myself, “this is torture.” I had no idea what torture was.

Torture is having a tube full of raw eggs shoved down my throat and into my stomach because I refused to eat. I still cough up blood sometimes. Torture is watching a guard grab Dora, one of the first people to support the National Women’s Party, and throw her into a dark cell, where she hit her head so hard on an iron bed she was knocked unconscious. Dorothy, who believes in nothing if not peace, was repeatedly slammed into an iron bench. Lucy - (beat) Lucy Burns, my co-founder of the NWP and my closest friend, had her hands tied to a metal bar above her head, where her feet barely touched the ground, and was left there all night. The rest of us were degraded, kicked, punched, and thrown around. We endured a night of terror for peaceful protest.

I have been asked to speak here today and tell my story, and I am angry. I am angry that this is my story to tell. I am angry that this is how President Wilson would allow peaceful American citizens to be treated in prisons. I am angry about how we are no closer to women’s suffrage now than when I went into prison. I am angry that I have to stand here today.

So, Mr. President, I ask you – how long must women wait for liberty?