00:10 - We're here with Heather.

00:11 - Sharkey, professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

00:14 - Tell us, who was Alice Paul and why was she important?

00:17 - Alice Paul was the suffragist of the early 20th century

00:21 - who made a major contribution to securing women voting rights.

00:25 - But she was more than that.

00:26 - She was a women's rights activist generally,

00:29 - and also advocated during her career for children's rights.

00:33 - What rights did women have at the time

00:36 - when she was a young woman?

00:38 - In the opening years of the 20th century, there were starting

00:41 - to be more educational opportunities for women.

00:45 - But women still didn't receive necessarily equal pay, didn't have equal access.

00:51 - There weren't the same employment opportunities for women.

00:54 - And these were some of the issues that concerned her.

00:57 - What work did Alice Paul do to further the women's equality movement?

01:02 - So as a student at Swarthmore College in Southeast Pennsylvania,

01:07 - which was, incidentally, a Quaker institution

01:10 - inspired by ideals of social equality, she became aware of

01:17 - women's rights, expanding educational opportunities, and so forth.

01:20 - She worked for a time in New York City, volunteering

01:23 - with immigrant populations and then went to Europe.

01:27 - And it was while she was in Europe, and specifically in London,

01:30 - that she encountered the British suffragist movement,

01:34 - or suffragette movement, and became aware of the possibilities

01:38 - of nonviolent resistance and protest

01:41 - in changing or calling for the improvement

01:45 - of rights for for women and for others.

01:49 - You mentioned Alice going to a Quaker university.

01:53 - She grew up Quaker.

01:54 - What was her upbringing like and how that how did that inspire her activism?

01:58 - She came from a very long standing Pennsylvania, new Jersey.

02:03 - Quaker family that had been in the country since the time of William Penn.

02:08 - And some of her relatives were instrumental in founding, Swarthmore.

02:12 - College.

02:13 - And also they were involved in the abolition movement to end slavery.

02:18 - And they were advocates for equal educational

02:22 - opportunities for boys and girls, men and women.

02:26 - What did she study at Swarthmore College?

02:28 - She herself studied math and science, which was, you know,

02:32 - one of the new opportunities available to women at the time.

02:36 - So, yeah, she had a very keen, analytical mind.

02:40 - So I'm not surprised that that's what she went for.

02:43 - So you mentioned she was in London and she was inspired by the women's

02:47 - rights movement over there.

02:48 - What exactly did somebody pull her in specifically or what about it

02:52 - attracted her?

02:53 - I think going growing out of her Quaker

02:56 - upbringing, which, by the way, was also very egalitarian and very much

03:00 - focused on equality between different members of society.

03:03 - Simple living and so forth.

03:05 - She was inspired by the idea

03:08 - of trying to encourage positive social change.

03:12 - And so when she was in London, in fact, she participated in things

03:16 - like the hunger strikes and, and she was

03:20 - one of the people who faced imprisonment in, in London

03:25 - with the other women who were marching in these activities.

03:29 - How did the British suffrage movement differ from the American?

03:33 - Well, I mean, their protests that they started

03:36 - were somewhat earlier than ours in the in, in those sorts of tactics.

03:41 - So there were similar efforts on both sides of the Atlantic

03:45 - and in the English speaking world to call for the improvement of women's rights.

03:49 - But it was specifically the British suffragettes who then inspired Alice Paul

03:54 - and gave her an idea of potential forms that protest could take.

03:59 - And then when she came back to the United States,

04:02 - she began to implement

04:04 - some of those, but only after she finished her

04:07 - graduate education, and secured her PhD.

04:13 - Talk a little bit about what some of those, protest forms

04:16 - that she brought from across the pond to the U.S., where?

04:20 - Well, I mean, one

04:21 - thing was very simply having public events and debates

04:26 - and bringing people together. In many ways,

04:28 - that's a continuation of what Quakers and others were doing already.

04:32 - But she participated in, groups

04:35 - in Philadelphia, for example, that would get together and have,

04:39 - discussions about child labor laws

04:42 - or women's voting rights and so forth.

04:45 - But it was also the marching, nonviolent marching.

04:48 - And silent protest, in some cases

04:52 - being visible, on the streets.

04:55 - Those were some of the tactics that she really introduced and promoted here.

05:01 - She was, part of a group who did something called these Silent Sentinels.

05:05 - What can you tell us about that?

05:07 - Well, they showed up in front of the in front of the white House and marched

05:11 - in Washington, D.C., and their goal was to bring visibility to the movement.

05:16 - And this was after her.

05:19 - She finished her PhD just after around

05:21 - the time of the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson,

05:24 - that they marched to the white House and in the streets of Washington, D.C.,

05:28 - and stood outside with signs and placards and,

05:33 - you know, calling for women's voting rights in that case.

05:37 - How did community and the society at the time react to Alice Paul

05:41 - and the other suffragettes?

05:43 - They were very,

05:45 - you know, judging from the newspaper reports of the time.

05:49 - Many were

05:52 - inspired and shocked by what they were doing, but at the same time

05:56 - respected them in so far as they were not causing any damage

06:01 - to property and they were respectful and in the in their US protests and,

06:06 - they were very silently attesting

06:10 - to what they believe needed to happen in US society.

06:15 - But really, it's funny

06:16 - because I think those protests are just the most visible part.

06:19 - That's what people remember.

06:21 - Really.

06:22 - What Alice Paul achieved was the slow,

06:25 - quiet, behind the scenes work to organize people

06:31 - and to argue rationally for issues, to analyze what was going on.

06:36 - That's not what gets put in movies or plays and stories about Alice Paul.

06:42 - It was really the years of quiet effort, sustained effort

06:45 - behind the scenes that made the difference.

06:49 - Can you talk about some of those efforts?

06:51 - Well,

06:52 - she one of her efforts was through her scholarship.

06:55 - She studied laws about U.S.

06:59 - women, American women, and also Pennsylvania laws.

07:02 - That's what she ended up doing when she went

07:06 - to the University of Pennsylvania to start her PhD degree.

07:09 - She studied the history of laws in Pennsylvania

07:13 - to see how women's rights

07:17 - had evolved, actually, from very actually,

07:21 - there weren't that many rights that they had, in fact.

07:24 - And how things changed, over the generations.

07:27 - And then later, after women did, around the time that women,

07:32 - were protesting and she was leading protests in Washington, D.C.,

07:35 - and around the time of the 19th

07:39 - amendment to the Constitution, and when women won the right to vote,

07:42 - she started broadening that and looking at things

07:45 - on a national level, and looking at laws and changes in laws.

07:49 - And she wanted to understand

07:51 - how, what the laws were, but also how and why they changed

07:56 - and what improved the situation for different people,

08:00 - and what would be the desired outcome of changes

08:04 - and voting rights were just one small part of what she was doing.

08:10 - You mentioned her going to, University of Pennsylvania to get her PhD.

08:13 - Can you talk a little bit

08:14 - about the significance of the dissertation she wrote while she was in that program?

08:18 - The dissertation that she wrote, I think, gives

08:22 - really deep insights into the nature of her thought and shows

08:27 - that she was interested in far more than voting rights

08:32 - and saw voting rights as just one

08:34 - piece of the one part of the equation.

08:37 - And most people now remember her for the voting rights.

08:40 - But what she really did in her dissertation,

08:43 - and I think this is the most significant thing, is she discussed

08:46 - the importance of property rights, women's ability to

08:52 - control some of the income that they earned

08:54 - if their husbands or fathers died, their ability

08:58 - to inherit and use the money that they had,

09:02 - the ability of women to have some rights of guardianship over their children.

09:08 - These were the things she wrote about.

09:10 - I think her dissertation,

09:12 - which she never published and which exists in only a manuscript

09:16 - meaning a handwritten form at Penn today, shows us that her thinking went

09:22 - way beyond just voting, even if that's what people remember her for now,

09:26 - and that she believed very strongly that the best and most important way

09:32 - to improve rights for women would be to enhance their property rights.

09:37 - And or another way she put it in her dissertation is to say

09:41 - economic power translates into political power.

09:45 - How was the economic system set up then?

09:48 - I know you mentioned, like, did the husbands own the property?

09:52 - Well, she traces it from the beginning, first of in her dissertation

09:56 - from the beginning of Swedish

09:57 - and then Dutch settlement, and then English or or British settlement

10:01 - in Delaware, new Jersey and Pennsylvania.

10:05 - And she shows what common laws

10:09 - came to Pennsylvania from England, and they were extraordinarily restrictive.

10:15 - Women did not.

10:16 - Married women lost control over their property.

10:19 - Their husbands could do anything that they wanted with their money or property.

10:23 - Let's say if a woman inherited something from her father,

10:27 - only husbands had control over child custody.

10:31 - They had the right to beat their wives and children.

10:36 - Women could not

10:37 - sign contracts and engage in business dealings

10:41 - independently of husbands if they were married.

10:45 - So in all ways, women were in all significant ways

10:48 - regarding property and the control of their bodies and their families.

10:52 - Women were very constrained.

10:53 - But what she sees and in her study and what she shows in her dissertation,

10:58 - is that there was one moment that she thinks is really significant

11:02 - in the history of women in the United States at large,

11:05 - but specifically in Pennsylvania.

11:07 - And that's 1848, when there's a passage of a new Property Act which recognizes

11:12 - some ability, not full ability, but some ability of women

11:16 - to continue controlling their assets even after they get married.

11:22 - And what's interesting about her dissertation is she

11:25 - shows that the movers and shakers behind passage of that law were actually men,

11:30 - and it was actually fathers

11:33 - who were sort of worried about what would happen to their daughters,

11:36 - because they realized that their sons in law were turning out

11:39 - to be, not terribly reliable.

11:43 - And that's where some of the change came from.

11:46 - And she also discusses, and this is, I think, another very interesting

11:49 - thing about her dissertation is how changes in Pennsylvania society,

11:54 - which again, mirrored larger trends in American society at large,

11:59 - really required or necessitated a change of the laws.

12:02 - They were becoming, ill equipped to handle

12:06 - changing conditions, especially as people moved around more.

12:10 - As industrialization increased, as women became better educated

12:14 - and also had more jobs, and as people realized that women

12:18 - needed to be able to sign business contracts.

12:21 - Now you transcribed her unfinished dissertation.

12:24 - Can you talk a little bit about that process?

12:26 - Yeah, it was really exciting.

12:27 - I was teaching a seminar in 2020

12:32 - to mark the centennial of women's voting rights,

12:37 - and on the first day of class in January 2020, I happened to be writing

12:41 - to the librarian, one of the curators of rare books and manuscripts at Penn,

12:46 - and he said to me, you know, we have Alice Paul's manuscript dissertation.

12:50 - I said, really? Can we come and see it?

12:52 - And so that first day of class with the students, we went to the library

12:56 - and we saw her dissertation, and it was amazing

12:59 - because it's handwritten and it was.

13:03 - And we were flipping through the pages

13:05 - and he said, you know, somebody should really transcribe this,

13:08 - meaning write down what the dissertation says,

13:12 - because nobody's ever really looked at this.

13:14 - Then, as you can possibly guess, Covid hit the universe shut down.

13:19 - And we still had this interest in Alice Paul's dissertation.

13:23 - And at that point the librarian said, you know what?

13:25 - I have an old scan that I made of it many years ago.

13:29 - And what ended up happening is that the students and I,

13:32 - as a Covid lockdown project,

13:35 - began to transcribe her dissertation, which was really hard, actually,

13:40 - because the handwriting is in some places really messy

13:45 - and it it had not been digitized.

13:48 - I think it would be difficult to digitize something that's so messy.

13:51 - So it was actually kind of hard to do and it took a long time.

13:55 - What surprised you about some of the things you saw in this dissertation?

14:01 - Well, there were a number of things.

14:04 - One material what surprised us is that many different

14:08 - that we saw many different handwriting thinking about this, these papers

14:11 - as a physical object, it made us realize that that Alice Paul must have.

14:16 - We know she wrote some of it herself.

14:18 - We can see where it's her handwriting.

14:20 - We can see where other people wrote parts of it.

14:23 - There are a few pages at the end

14:25 - that are typed, so typewriters are starting to come in.

14:28 - So as a physical document, it's actually very interesting to see that.

14:33 - But I would say as we transcribed it,

14:37 - what surprised us was to realize what a broad view she had

14:42 - of the landscape, of women's rights and how it was tied into economic history.

14:47 - And some of it, honestly, is difficult to read because the cases

14:51 - that she describes are so harrowing.

14:56 - How many pages is the dissertation?

14:58 - Oh, I'd have to look it up again.

15:00 - I forget it's because, like, some of them are just like it will be a partial page.

15:05 - And so it's like a scrap page scribbled half way.

15:08 - So it's a couple of hundred pages of different

15:11 - levels of density of text.

15:14 - Is the dissertation unfinished? Yes.

15:18 - And that's one of the things that we started to write about according

15:21 - to afterwards, after we transcribed it,

15:26 - I actually started to write an article about this,

15:29 - and we discussed how

15:32 - the dissertation was never

15:36 - the university should have a copy

15:38 - of the final form of the dissertation, and she should have published it.

15:41 - But all the university has is this manuscript, very rough manuscript,

15:46 - draft copy.

15:48 - And so it is not a finished copy.

15:50 - And I think that's also why people don't know what's in it.

15:55 - And many people, if you'll see references to it,

15:57 - even on the Wikipedia page now, which claim that her dissertation

16:02 - is about women's voting rights and the suffrage movement, it's not.

16:06 - It's about women's property rights and changing.

16:08 - The changing place of women in law with voting is one part of that.

16:13 - With the focus on Pennsylvania now around this time, as Alison,

16:18 - you know, going through school, writing her dissertation

16:20 - and the women's suffrage movement, World War One broke out.

16:23 - How did that affect the women's suffrage movement in the United States?

16:28 - Well, commentator.

16:30 - This is after the part of the history that we studied, because she finished her

16:33 - dissertation in 1912, began her activism.

16:37 - And it was just before World War One broke out.

16:42 - What many observers say is that the course of the war and the roles that women

16:47 - had to assume, while so many men went off

16:50 - to fight, increased public sympathy

16:53 - for the ability of women to be responsible voters and citizens and so forth.

16:58 - So that eventually that paved the way for the 19th amendment.

17:03 - The 19th amendment was passed in 1920.

17:06 - What did that say?

17:08 - The amendment said that,

17:11 - there shall be no discrimination on the basis of sex in voting.

17:16 - Did Alice have any involvement in the passage of this amendment?

17:19 - Did anything she say help them when they were voting on this amendment?

17:24 - Well, there was you know, there were the conscious efforts

17:27 - and behind the scenes efforts to make,

17:31 - support for passage

17:34 - on a state by state basis happen, you know, to increase public awareness

17:39 - and visibility and talking to people and writing letters and,

17:44 - getting out into the streets and all that kind of behind the scenes organizing.

17:48 - It's somewhat hard to see exactly how that process worked,

17:52 - because as many people have noted, she was an incredibly hard

17:56 - working person who worked very late hours, but she was very private,

18:00 - and she was not even very charismatic or self-promoting.

18:04 - So that also makes it harder for people to realize exactly

18:08 - what she was doing on a day to day basis.

18:11 - I think that's also why people tend to focus so much on her marches,

18:15 - because that's where she was very visible and it was obvious and it was strong.

18:19 - But mostly she was a very much a behind the scenes,

18:23 - slow, painstaking work kind of person.

18:27 - Where did some of these marches occur?

18:30 - Well, mostly the most visible ones in Washington, D.C.

18:33 - that's where they were focusing their efforts.

18:36 - Lastly, what is Alice Paul's legacy today?

18:40 - That's a really good question.

18:42 - And I think we're still we,

18:46 - meaning Americans are still working through that

18:50 - every day.

18:51 - I think the most common answer would be to say the greatest, most lasting

18:55 - legacy is what she achieved for women's voting rights.

18:59 - But, you know, she spent the rest of her career

19:02 - the next 50 years after women secured the right to vote, she was still working.

19:07 - And what was she doing?

19:08 - One of the things the big things was she was trying to promote equal

19:12 - the Equal Rights Amendment to secure,

19:15 - equality for men and women in employment.

19:18 - She was also doing a lot of international work,

19:21 - in trying to create international solidarity networks.

19:25 - So she continued to work for many years.

19:28 - I think looking back at her dissertation, what I would now say is that

19:34 - more and more inspiring

19:36 - for me, even then, the great things she did with getting the women

19:40 - the right to vote was her analysis of

19:44 - and belief in the importance of women's economic empowerment.

19:49 - We've been speaking with Heather Sharkey,

19:51 - professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

19:53 - Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much.

20:03 - For.