In N.J., honoring towering advocate of women's rights

Alice Paul wouldn't have wanted her Mount Laurel birthplace to become a historical museum.

She focused on the future - on a day when equality for women finally would be enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

So I imagine the pioneering suffragist and feminist (1885-1977) would feel right at home at today's Paulsdale, headquarters of an educational and advocacy organization that carries on her mission.

"When we decided to do something to honor Alice Paul, we weren't interested in a plaque," says Barbara Irvine, 70, of Cinnaminson, who helped found the Alice Paul Institute in 1985.

"We wanted a living legacy," adds Irvine, retired executive director of the New Jersey Historic Trust.

"The work is not done," says Lucienne Beard, the institute's executive director. "We have a whole generation of women who don't know what the Equal Rights Amendment is."

While some Americans might regard the constitutional amendment Paul wrote and fought for as an historical artifact - the ERA's state-by-state ratification process failed in 1983 - the institute is continuing the fight.

The nonprofit group is one of the most prominent members in the ERA Coalition (eracoalition.org), a national effort to secure the amendment's passage.

"In every congressional session, the ERA gets reintroduced," says Beard, 57, a married mother of three who lives in Mount Laurel. "But it has never gotten out of committee."

The stakes are nothing less than "legal equality" for women, she adds. "What binds us together as a nation is our Constitution. But it doesn't recognize the equal rights of half the population."

We're chatting in the front parlor of Paulsdale, a grand, 200-year-old farmhouse where Paul was raised by a Quaker family that believed in social justice.

The six degrees she earned (including three doctorates of law) are framed on one wall. Nearby is a photographic portrait, circa 1925, in which Paul looks formidable.

This extraordinary person led a movement that secured passage of the 19th amendment and won women the right to vote in 1920; authored the ERA in 1923; and helped obtain visas for Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution. She died in a Moorestown nursing home and is buried in Cinnaminson.

"We have only one picture of her smiling," says Beard, noting that while Paul may have been reluctant to reveal her prominent teeth, "she was working on a serious cause . . . and she wanted any image of her to convey that seriousness."

Leadership development classes for girls and young women are a core mission of the institute, which also offers professional "shadowing" with local professional women, field trips, and other confidence-building, horizon-expanding opportunities. Annually, about 5,000 people patronize Paulsdale or its programs.

"One person can make a difference. Alice believed that. And she made a difference," says Melinda Champion, 50, a marketing executive who chairs the institute's board. "We're developing future leaders and role models."

While agreeing that by some measures, life "is certainly getting better" for women, Champion - who is married, has two children, and lives in Haddonfield - rejects the notion that the ERA has been rendered unnecessary.

"De facto equality is not enough," Champion says. "Our rights can be legislated away."

Adds Irvine, "The only way this is ever going to stop is by ratifying the ERA."

I remember the late 1970s and early '80s, when opponents insisted the amendment would make America a "unisex" society. Supporters were accused of hating men.

"Inequality of the sexes hurts men and women," says Madison Beske-Somers, 16, who is active on the Institute's Girls Advisory Council. She admires Paul because she "said what she believed in and showed what she believed in."

"I just want a world where girls don't have to be afraid," adds the Clearview Regional High School junior and Mullica Hill resident. "We're all human. There's no reason why we all shouldn't be equal."

Alice Paul couldn't have said it better herself.