Iron Jawed Angels
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
40 free Iron Jawed Angels trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Iron Jawed Angels turns a chapter of American history that many classes rush past into a fast, angry and often funny drama. It follows Alice Paul and Lucy Burns as they break with the cautious suffrage establishment, carry their protest to the White House gates and pay for it behind bars. The film is a regular in history and civics lessons, which is why so many people go looking for questions on it once the credits roll. This quiz covers the story from the first great parade to the final ratification vote: who did what, who played whom, what the protesters endured in jail and how the country finally changed its mind. It also sorts fact from fiction, because the film mixes real suffragists with a few characters the writers made up, and historians have had plenty to say about its choices. The questions start easy for anyone who has just watched the film and get harder as they move into the real history behind it. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so the quiz works as a study guide, a classroom warm-up or a refresher before a test.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which two-time Best Actress Oscar winner plays suffragist leader Alice Paul in Iron Jawed Angels?
Hilary Swank
Hilary Swank won her second Best Actress Oscar for Million Dollar Baby, which reached cinemas the same year as her turn as Alice Paul.
Q 02Suffragists picketing the White House in Iron Jawed Angels are arrested on what unlikely charge?
Obstructing traffic
Obstructing traffic was the charge police turned to in June 1917, after tolerating the pickets for months. The first six women convicted chose three days in jail over a $25 fine.
Q 03Inez Milholland leads the 1913 suffrage parade through Washington in Iron Jawed Angels riding what?
A white horse
A white horse named Gray Dawn carried her at the head of the march, and she wore a crown and a long white cape as its herald.
Q 04Harry Burn casts the deciding vote for women's suffrage in Iron Jawed Angels after a plea from whom?
His mother
His mother, Febb Burn, wrote urging him to back ratification, and he kept her message in his coat pocket while the roll was called.
Q 05Which state's lawmakers cast the final ratification needed for women's suffrage in Iron Jawed Angels?
Tennessee
Tennessee became the 36th and deciding state in August 1920, when its House approved the measure with just 50 of 99 members voting yes.
Q 06Jailers force-feed the hunger-striking Alice Paul in Iron Jawed Angels with a mix of milk and what else?
Raw eggs
Raw eggs were picked for their protein, and prison doctors pushed the mixture down tubes into the women's throats.
Q 07Which future Grey's Anatomy star plays Ben Weissman, the invented love interest, in Iron Jawed Angels?
Patrick Dempsey
Patrick Dempsey made the film a year before his debut as surgeon Derek Shepherd. Ben Weissman never existed: the writers created him to give Alice Paul a romance.
Q 08Iron Jawed Angels ends with the ratification of which change to the US Constitution, giving women the vote?
Nineteenth Amendment
The Nineteenth Amendment was certified on August 26, 1920, a date now marked every year as Women's Equality Day.
Q 09Alice Paul and Lucy Burns open Iron Jawed Angels fresh from militant suffrage protests in which country?
England
England was where the two met while campaigning with a militant suffragette union, whose confrontational tactics they carried home.
Q 10The 1913 suffrage parade staged by Alice Paul in Iron Jawed Angels is timed for the eve of which event?
A presidential inauguration
A presidential inauguration, Woodrow Wilson's first, followed on March 4, 1913. When he reached Washington the day before, the crowds he expected were off watching the suffrage march.
Q 11Which television network produced Iron Jawed Angels, first airing the suffrage drama in February 2004?
HBO
HBO's production earned five Emmy nominations without a win, though its camerawork took the American Society of Cinematographers award.
Q 12Which actress won a Golden Globe for playing Carrie Chapman Catt, Alice Paul's rival, in Iron Jawed Angels?
Anjelica Huston
Anjelica Huston took the supporting-actress prize almost twenty years after her Oscar for Prizzi's Honor, a film directed by her father, John.
Q 13The suffragists who picketed Woodrow Wilson's White House from January 1917 were known by what name?
Silent Sentinels
The Silent Sentinels kept up their vigil for two and a half years, and more than 2,000 women took a turn at the gates.
Q 21Which suffragette founded the Women's Social and Political Union, where Alice Paul and Lucy Burns trained?
Emmeline Pankhurst
Emmeline Pankhurst founded the union in 1903 and ran it with her daughter Christabel, the speaker who first won Alice Paul over to the cause.
Q 22Alice Paul, the heroine of Iron Jawed Angels, was raised in which faith that also founded her college?
Quaker
Quaker ideals of public service shaped her childhood, and she died in 1977 at a home run by the same faith, less than a mile from her birthplace.
Q 23Alice Paul first met Lucy Burns in what unlikely setting, after both were arrested at a suffrage protest?
A police station
Q 14The 1917 beating of jailed suffragists by their guards, dramatized in Iron Jawed Angels, is known as what?
Night of Terror
The Night of Terror began when the workhouse superintendent ordered nearly forty guards to brutalize the women. Lucy Burns spent it with her hands chained above her head.
Q 15Suffragists arrested outside the White House in Iron Jawed Angels serve their sentences at which prison?
Occoquan
Occoquan was a Virginia prison farm meant for nonviolent offenders on short sentences. The film's pickets are sent there for 60-day terms.
Q 16Ben Weissman, the fictional love interest of Alice Paul in Iron Jawed Angels, earns his living as what?
A newspaper cartoonist
A newspaper cartoonist who draws on Washington politics, he annoyed historians: the real Alice Paul was a skilled publicist who needed no pressman's help.
Q 17Which anti-lynching journalist refuses to march at the back of the 1913 parade in Iron Jawed Angels?
Ida B. Wells
Ida B. Wells really did step out of the crowd to join the Illinois delegation mid-route, though the warm welcome Alice Paul gives her on screen never happened.
Q 18Which proposal did Alice Paul co-write and see introduced in 1923, three years after suffrage was won?
Equal Rights Amendment
The Equal Rights Amendment was drafted with Crystal Eastman and first named for abolitionist Lucretia Mott; in 1943 it was renamed for Alice Paul herself.
Q 19The title Iron Jawed Angels comes from a 1917 insult by Joseph Walsh, who held what job?
A congressman
A congressman from Massachusetts, Walsh fought the creation of a suffrage committee, saying it would mean yielding to the nagging of iron-jawed angels.
Q 20Jailers in Iron Jawed Angels move the hunger-striking Alice Paul to what kind of prison ward?
Psychiatric
Psychiatric confinement was the prison's answer once she stopped eating. Sentenced to seven months, she walked free after five weeks.
A police station brought them together: Paul introduced herself after spotting the American flag pin on her fellow prisoner's lapel.
Q 24Forced out of the mainstream suffrage association, Alice Paul founds which group in Iron Jawed Angels?
National Woman's Party
The National Woman's Party took shape in 1916 and held the party in power responsible, campaigning against Democrats in the 1918 midterm elections.
Q 25Carrie Chapman Catt, the cautious rival of Alice Paul in Iron Jawed Angels, founded which group in 1920?
League of Women Voters
The League of Women Voters was launched six months before ratification, so that millions of first-time voters would be ready to use the ballot.
Q 26A notorious 1917 picket banner outside the White House likened Woodrow Wilson to which foreign ruler?
Kaiser Wilhelm II
Kaiser Wilhelm II ruled the enemy America was then fighting. The banner said 20 million American women were no more self-governed than his subjects, and crowds tore it down.
Q 27Pickets in Iron Jawed Angels wear sashes in which three colors of Alice Paul's suffrage party?
Purple, white and gold
Purple, white and gold appeared on the sashes and usually on the banners too, so the line at the gates always read as a single movement.
Q 28Harry Burn, whose vote decided women's suffrage, had turned up wearing which anti-suffrage symbol?
A red rose
A red rose marked opponents of ratification while supporters wore yellow, which is why his sudden aye enraged the anti-suffrage camp.
Q 29Jailed suffragists in Iron Jawed Angels demand to be treated as what, a status America had never granted?
Political prisoners
Political prisoners in much of Europe were spared searches, prison clothes and forced feeding, and the American women claimed the same standing.
Q 30Reviewers and historians faulted Iron Jawed Angels for telling its 1910s story with which stylistic choice?
A modern soundtrack
A modern soundtrack struck one TV Guide critic as music fit for a Lilith Fair tour, jarring against an otherwise flawless period production.