Doris Stevens was a very special woman. She was born October 26, 1892 in Omaha, Nebraska. She was special because she was one of the women that was a supporter of women's suffrage in the early 1910s. Doris graduated from Oberlin College in 1911 and began settlement work in Cleveland, Ohio. Settlement houses were places that provided community services to those who were underprivileged. When she asked the Cleveland government to make her an inspector of the tenements (run down places) where her clients lived, they told her she could volunteer. Doris went back to Oberlin to teach from 1911-1912. She became vice-principal of Oberlin High School.

After working to get women the right to vote in Ohio, Michigan. and Montana without success, Doris joined with Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, Mabel Vernon, Olympia Brown, Mary Ritter Beard, Belle LaFollete, Helen Keller, Maria Montessori, Dorothy Day, and Crystal Eastman to form the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage in 1913. She thought that the right to vote would have to come with a constitutional amendment. Doris Stevens went to jail just like Alice Paul and Lucy Burns and in 1920 she wrote Jailed for Freedom. about their experience.

Doris Stevens was married twice! On December 10, 1921 she married lawyer Dudley Field Malone. He had worked for the National Women's Party during the time they were picketing the White House. They were divorced in 1923. On August 31, 1935 she married Jonathan E. Mitchell. He was a journalist for the New York World.

Finally, she became a member of the National Women's Party's national council between 1931 and 1936, also she became chairman of the Inter American Commission of Women. (1924-1948) Doris campaigned for the passage of an Equal Rights Amendment for women.

Sadly, Doris Stevens died on March 22, 1963 in New York City.

by Ayesha & Sophie, fourth grade 2004