Who led the more militant suffrage movement and helped push the 19th Amendment through?

• A. Alice Paul
• B. Susan B. Anthony
• C. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• D. Lucy Stone

Answer: (A)

Militant leadership and the push for a nationwide voting-rights guarantee changed how the suffrage movement operated. Alice Paul spearheaded this approach by organizing the National Woman’s Party and prioritizing an explicit federal amendment. Her tactics—public White House picketing by the Silent Sentinels, hunger strikes, and sustained national pressure—kept the issue in the public eye and pressed Congress toward action, helping secure the 19th Amendment in 1920. Earlier leaders like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton built the movement through state-by-state campaigns and broad lobbying within NAWSA, which, while crucial, did not adopt the same confrontational tactics or federal-amendment strategy. Lucy Stone contributed foundational work to the suffrage cause but was part of the earlier generation, not the organizer of the later militant national campaign.