Alice Paul's Day — On Stage, On the Sidewalk, and Unfinished

In that photograph of Alice Paul taken in 1918, she is composed, direct, and utterly certain. The suffrage movement is still two years from victory by being placed in the Constitution as the 19th Amendment. She is already thinking past it.

That photograph leads this entry — because today, more than any other day on this journey, belonged to Alice Paul.

Every night the Golden Flyer II parks in front of the theater showing Suffs, a conversation begins on the sidewalk. Most theatregoers know Alice Paul, the main character in the musical, as the suffragist — the hunger striker, the force of nature, the woman who was beaten and jailed and force-fed and refused to break. They've heard about the Night of Terror at the Occoquan Workhouse, where Silent Sentinels were stripped, beaten, and handcuffed with their arms overhead. They know she was the fire at the center of the suffrage movement.

What surprises many of them — and this is the conversation the Golden Flyer II team has been having on sidewalks from New Jersey to North Carolina — is what Alice Paul did next.

When the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, Alice Paul did not stop. She had never believed that the right to vote was enough. One law, one election, one amendment — none of it would hold without a constitutional guarantee. So in 1923, three years after women won the vote, she wrote the Equal Rights Amendment. A single, clarifying sentence: equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

She spent the rest of her life fighting for it.

We have visited Alice Paul's world twice on this journey. At Paulsdale, her childhood home in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, we stood in the rooms where she grew up. At Lorton, Virginia, we stood on the grounds of the Occoquan Workhouse — now the Turning Point Suffragist Memorial — where she was imprisoned, where the Night of Terror unfolded, where she and Lucy Burns led a hunger strike and were force-fed rather than released. We know who she was.

Suffs puts her on stage and reminds a new generation. The Golden Flyer II parks outside and asks that generation to finish her work.

Back at the Belk Theatre for the second night, Susan navigated the Golden Flyer II through the bollards again with the calm of someone who has done this before — because she has.

And then something wonderful happened. Suffs cast member Marissa Hecker spots Jeryl Schriever — and the Golden Flyer II — outside the Belk Theatre and stops for a closer look. She recognized Jeryl's green hat from the front row the night before. She climbed in, took photos, and pledged to spread the word to her castmates.

The line formed again. And the conversations that unfolded in that line were extraordinary. Young people and older people. Diverse audiences. People in period costumes who had clearly done their homework, and people who had just seen the show and were still processing what they'd learned. Many already knew the ERA had been ratified by 38 states. Many did not know that Congress has still not affirmed it as the 28th Amendment — that the constitutional finish line has been crossed and the recognition has not followed. When they found that out, they were not confused. They were angry. And anger, directed properly, signs petitions and takes clipboards home and shows up at the polls.

Suffs is not just in Charlotte. It is touring the country — and wherever it lands, it brings a new audience face to face with Alice Paul, with the suffrage movement, and with the unfinished work she left behind. If you want to see when Suffs is coming to your city here’s the tour schedule. Take friends Take petitions. Because every theater full of people who just watched Alice Paul refuse to stop is a theater full of people who might be persuaded to pick up where she left off.

Alice Paul would not have stopped at a standing ovation. Neither should we.