Alice Paul Sewing a Suffrage Flag

Here, suffragist Alice Paul evokes the memory of Revolutionary flag makers, such as Betsy Ross, as she sews a National Woman’s Party (NWP) suffrage flag. 

Alice Paul was a New Jersey Quaker and suffragist. She formed the NWP in 1913, a more militant organization of the suffrage movement. Photographs like this one, portraying Paul as a kind of “revolutionary mother,” may have helped counteract criticisms of Paul and the NWP as being too radical or unpatriotic.