Making Amends with Suffragist Alice Paul
There it was staring me in the face — the date of death for famous suffragist and Equal Rights Amendment author Alice Paul. A simple Google search told me she had died at age 92 on July 9, 1977. That date was just five years after I had written an “anti-women’s lib movement” letter to the editor of our local paper when I was only 13. Somehow, it had always escaped my notice that Alice was still alive when my words were printed.
My letter was published in The Courier-Journal in my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, which was considered one of the nation’s top newspapers in 1972. I had been prompted to write it by my parents (especially my father — no surprise). You see, they had been falsely convinced that, if the ERA passed, I might someday be expected to fight on the front lines in a war. Naturally, as a young girl, I didn’t want that.
This year — fifty-two years after I wrote that naïve, ill-informed letter to the editor — I sat in a Broadway theater and watched Shaina Taub portray Alice Paul in Suffs, the new Tony Award-winning Broadway musical she wrote about suffragist history.
When I sat in that dark theater and conducted my Google search during intermission, my breath caught as I realized Alice could have read what I wrote. Now, as a woman entering the latter part of my life with firsthand experience of what my gender has endured and continues to endure, that realization is shocking.
It was just a few short years after my 13th birthday that I understood the truth of what Alice Paul tried to teach our society decades before I was born. Before that awakening, I won several speech contests in high school, mostly sponsored by Catholic organizations, touting a purportedly strong argument against abortion.
Once I made it to college, however, I finally started to question the wisdom of what I had been told. My understanding of history deepened, my capacity for empathy expanded, and my eyes began to open. For example, it was then I realized that my mother wasn’t allowed to open her own bank account until two years after my letter was published.
A few years ago, I found my letter in the newspaper archives, as well as a couple of letters The Courier-Journal published from others in response to it. At that time, I was amused by my naïve words. It all felt so harmless in retrospect.
But after learning that Alice was still alive in 1972, my childish writing didn’t feel so harmless anymore. I felt stupid for not knowing she had lived such a long life. Fifty-plus years later, I was confronted with the possibility that a woman I admire beyond measure might have seen a letter I’m now ashamed of.
If it was brought to her attention, did it break her heart? Did she worry that her legacy would be destroyed by a new generation of ignorant girls fighting on the wrong side?
I’ll never know, of course. Nevertheless, the thought is chilling and fills me with profound grief.
I didn’t know any better at 13. But today, I know my letter stomped on the sacrifices of Alice and the other women who fought with her as they suffered unfathomable abuses. From where I stand now, the immensity of my gratitude for those women is beyond expression.
I’m sorry, Alice. I’m sorry for putting anything out into the world, however small it was, that could bring women down. I’m sorry that the Equal Rights Amendment you so brilliantly and bravely authored is still not a part of our Constitution, more than 100 years after you wrote it and almost 50 years after your death. I’m sorry that we’re still fighting against misogyny as we wait to see if we might, just maybe, finally elect a woman to the White House.
Thank you for what you did for those of us who came after you, and as the song goes in Suffs, we will keep marching on.
