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Description
Alice Paul, American women's rights activist and suffragette, describes her hunger strike and subsequent force feeding in Holloway jail in this 1909 newspaper article. Paul sentenced to seven months in jail after being arrested for demonstrating at the Lord Mayor’s banquet in London. She also refused to wear prison clothes or to work in protest of her and other suffragettes' imprisonment.
Full Transcript "Being Fed Through Nostrils is Described by Alice Paul, Young American Suffragette"
Source-Dependent Questions
- Using three pieces of evidence from the article, explain how the author portrays Alice Paul.
- Which specific parts of the article might the public react strongly to? How and why might it react in this way?
- What do you think Paul hoped to accomplish by holding a hunger strike and starving herself? What do her actions have in common with others throughout history that have held hunger strikes for different causes or performed other acts of civil disobedience?
Citation Information
Paul, Alice, "Alice Paul Describes Force Feeding," December 1909. Courtesy of Library of Congress