"Mr. President how long must women wait to get their liberty? Let us have the rights we deserve"

Alice Paul’s poignant demand, “Mr. President, how long must women wait to get their liberty? Let us have the rights we deserve,” encapsulates both impatience and moral urgency at the heart of the early twentieth-century women’s suffrage movement. Addressing the President directly, Paul’s appeal is not just a plea, but a challenge. She insists on the recognition of women as full citizens, pressing the point that liberty and rights, long cherished values in American democracy, remain incomplete as long as women are excluded from political participation.

Paul’s words echo the frustration felt by women who had worked, organized, and protested for decades, only to see their calls for suffrage repeatedly dismissed or delayed. By asking, “how long must women wait,” Paul emphasizes the injustice of delay, suggesting that postponing equal rights is in itself a denial of those rights. Rather than frame suffrage as a gracious concession from men in power, Paul declares it an overdue justice, a matter of natural entitlement. Her use of the word “liberty” ties the suffrage cause to the larger American struggle for freedom, implicitly comparing women’s lack of rights to other historic denials of liberty.

The phrase “let us have the rights we deserve” asserts that these rights are not privileges to be awarded, but inherent and just. The verb “let us have” implies that something is being wrongfully withheld, reinforcing the idea that women’s liberation is being unjustly obstructed by political leaders, including the President. This statement undercuts any argument for gradual reform or continued patience, insisting instead that women’s equality is an immediate and nonnegotiable demand.

Alice Paul, by appealing publicly to the nation’s highest office, forces the President, and the nation, to reckon with the contradiction of promoting liberty while denying it to half the population. Her words reveal both the personal cost of exclusion and the collective resolve of suffragists, encapsulating the urgency, righteousness, and inevitability of their cause.