Alice Paul, the suffragist most responsible for winning U.S. women the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment, is another of those selected to appear on folding money as the Treasury updates and diversifies its images of national heroes. She was a sociologist and lawyer who became a disciple of women’s suffrage leader Emmaline Pankhurst while studying in England and was arrested and jailed three times. She staged hunger strikes in jail, until force-feeding was ordered; it nearly ruined her health. Back in the United States, she was an aggressive campaigner and brilliant strategist through many brutal episodes. By denouncing President Woodrow Wilson and the Democrats through World War I, she gradually embarrassed him enough to gain his endorsement for her amendment as a necessary “war measure.” But it took still more effort before women finally achieved what had long been considered impossible, a national right to vote. (Hulton Archive)
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