Google Doodle honor for Alice Paul's 131st birthday
The suffragette Alice Paul was honored Monday with a whimsical Google Doodle and at her birthplace in Mount Laurel, where a congressman spoke of his efforts to have a posthumous Congressional Gold Medal awarded to her for her contributions to women's equality.
The suffragette Alice Paul was honored Monday with a whimsical Google Doodle and at her birthplace in Mount Laurel, where a congressman spoke of his efforts to have a posthumous Congressional Gold Medal awarded to her for her contributions to women's equality.
The Doodle, the central image on Google's search page, marked Paul's 131st birthday and linked to stories about Paul's lifelong dedication to passage of the 19th Amendment and the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. In the Doodle, Paul holds an umbrella and a sign that says "Deeds Not Words," a nod to her activism and willingness to go to jail to effect change. In the early 1900s, she went on a hunger strike after she was imprisoned in Virginia with other protesters; she was force-fed by her jailers.
Lucienne Beard, executive director of the Alice Paul Institute in Mount Laurel, said the Google Doodle triggered a spike in page views on the institute's website Monday. "The phones have been ringing all morning," she added.
U.S. Rep. Tom MacArthur told about 50 people who had assembled in Paul's childhood home that he had cosponsored a bill last month that would give Paul a Congressional Gold Medal. "She spent her life battling for justice for women. . . . That work is not done today," he said.
MacArthur, a Republican, represents the Third District, which includes Mount Laurel. "This is not just a symbolic act for me. We need to do more to bring about equality and justice for women," he said, praising the programs the Alice Paul Institute sponsors to teach girls and young women how to become leaders.
A similar bill honoring Paul introduced three years ago by MacArthur's predecessor, Jon Runyan, failed to win approval, but MacArthur said this is "a fight that has to be fought." He said that this time around, there is a companion bill moving forward in the Senate.
"One of the challenges is that every other district is saying, 'What about my hero?' . . . But very few people have done so much for many people as Alice Paul did," he said.
Lilyan Cralle said she attended the event Monday because she greatly admires Paul. "I met her the year before she passed away in Moorestown," in 1976, the Willingboro resident said. "She looked like an old lady in a nursing home, slumped over, but as soon as we mentioned we were working on the Equal Rights Amendment, she came alive, and it was like her spirit came out. . . . She said who we should go see to get it passed and what she had done."
Cralle said that she used to give tours of Paulsdale, the farmstead where Paul was born and lived as a child growing up in a Quaker family.
Holly Myers of Moorestown teared up when asked her opinion of Paul's birthday event. "I am just so moved by what a strong woman with conviction and ethics can do to bring equality," she said. Myers, a former member of the League of Women Voters, said Paul's activism demonstrates "the importance of individuals tuning into their hearts and speaking up and doing what's right."
Barbara Irvine, a founder of the Alice Paul Institute, said Paulsdale has a new exhibit for visitors to learn about Paul, who is not that well known. She was forgotten, Irvine said, "because she was so controversial." While some of the other suffragettes favored persistent lobbying, Paul favored stronger action and protests that got results, Irvine said. "She was the leader of the wing in the women's suffragette movement that decided to stop begging for their rights," she said.
Irvine said that awarding Paul the Congressional Gold Medal would bring distinction to her work and that of the Alice Paul Institute. It would provide "the highest level of recognition" to women's rights and to the woman who played a role in winning them, she said.
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