Monday, December 31, 2012
Inez Milholland: Beautiful Suffragist on a White Charger
CHRONICLES OF CROTON'S BOHEMIA
Wilson 's inauguration was scheduled for March 4, 1913. Suffrage
leader Alice Paul decided to upstage the event with "a procession for
women's suffrage" the day before his swearing in. When he arrived at Washington Princeton N.J.
On March 3, 1913, a statuesque woman clad in a flowing
white cape and riding a white horse was the leader of a giant women's suffrage
parade down Washington ’s Pennsylvania
Avenue .
She
carried a streaming banner reading, "Forward into light."
Not quite 27 years old, Inez Milholland already had an
impressive record of accomplishments.
She was a record-setting athlete in college, an attorney
specializing in workers’ problems, and a forceful and charismatic speaker. A
fighter for labor, she had been jailed as a suffragette in England .
After inventing a successful pneumatic tube system for city
mail delivery adopted in the United States Europe ,
her father, John E. Milholland, became wealthy. In 1905, he created the
Constitution League, a virtual one-man organization to fight the new “Jim Crow”
laws in the South that made racial segregation legal.
His organization’s combative tactics in the courts and the
press became the model for the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People. He became the NAACP’s first treasurer. Her mother wrote a
column, "Talks about Women," for The
Crisis, the NAACP periodical.
Inez Milholland was born in Brooklyn N.Y. Lewis , N.Y. ,
a small Adirondack village west of Lake Champlain ,
where the family had a sprawling estate.
In 1905, she entered Vassar College Poughkeepsie ,
where she captained the field hockey team and held forbidden suffrage meetings.
As a member of the track team, she set women's collegiate records in the shot
put and basketball throw. A week after graduating in 1909 she sailed for England
While in England ,
Inez applied to law schools at Oxford Cambridge Columbia U.S. New
York University 's School Law
During the 1912 presidential campaign, Theodore Roosevelt,
a Republican running on the Progressive ticket, split the Republican vote and
guaranteed victory to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
"Where is everybody?" the surprised president-elect
asked.
"They're all over at the suffrage parade on Pennsylvania
Avenue ," aides
told him.
Suffragists Attacked
In spite of its meticulous planning and precise execution,
the orderly parade of five thousand women turned into a near riot. Male
spectators jeered and shoved the marchers. Spitting on them and pelting them
with burning cigar butts, the rowdy crowd's behavior made the event a national
news story. Standing idly by, the police seemed almost indifferent, and the
situation quickly became chaotic.
Responding to a frantic appeal from Washington ’s
chief of police, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson ordered the Fifteenth
Cavalry to be summoned from Fort Myer Potomac .
Troopers charged up the crowded avenue to clear it for the suffragists. The
melee was an inauspicious start for an administration whose campaign had
promised a reformist program called the New Freedom. A New
York
In her busy life, Inez cut a wide swath through eager
suitors. She had a brief platonic affair with Max Eastman until they both
realized that their intense personalities clashed. They parted amicably.
Her name was also linked romantically with that of
Guglielmo Marconi, Italian inventor of wireless telegraphy. He regularly lost
his heart to beautiful young women. She called him “Billy.”
En route to England Netherlands .
Their wedding in London
When the couple returned to the United
States ,
they moved into the house in Harmon built by opera diva Lillian Nordica. The
house still stands on Alexander
Lane , a short street
opposite the Croton Free Library.
The Peace Ship
Late in 1915, Inez became a delegate on Henry Ford's
"peace ship," the Oscar
II of the
Scandinavian-American Line, chartered by the automaker in a vain attempt to
bring the warring nations of Europe
Thomas Edison, John Wanamaker and Walter Lippmann all
declined Ford’s invitation. Women active on behalf of suffrage, Anna Howard
Shaw, Helen Keller, Crystal Eastman and Jane Addams, similarly turned down
Ford’s offer of free passage. Even Clara Ford, the magnate’s wife, refused to
go.
Inez Mulholland accepted, saying, “The expedition may
fail, but the world has been the better for gallant failures.” Some 160
Americans made up the passenger list, one third of them members of the press,
including future ambassador William Christian Bullitt, representing the Philadelphia Ledger.
Conflict arose even before the ship reached Oslo .
Inez quit the party in Stockholm Berlin ,
where she charmed the German foreign minister.
A Fateful Campaign
When Wilson
The tall, beautiful Amazon set out on a speaking tour of
western states urging voters to reject him for failing to support the vote for
women. After leaving New York Wyoming , Idaho , Montana , Oregon , Washington , Utah , Nevada , California , Kansas Illinois --all
in less than a month. But Inez Milholland’s health was not good. Constantly
tired, she insisted on adhering to her grueling schedule.
At a rally in Los
Angeles
Admitted to Good Samaritan Hospital later that day, her
condition was diagnosed by specialists as aplastic anemia, a serious disease in
which the body is unable to make red blood cells. The only remedy is repeated
blood transfusions. Despite four transfusions the prognosis for Inez was not
good.
In his 1948 memoir Enjoyment of Living, Max Eastman recounted a touching
deathbed scene. Her distraught husband was at her bedside. As the flame of life
flickered within her, Eugen Boissevain asked, "Shall I come with you?"
Inez knew exactly what his oblique question implied.
"No," she whispered weakly, "you go on and live another life."
Inez Milholland died at 10:55 p.m. on November 25, 1916, at
the age of 30. The women's suffrage movement had lost a powerful voice, but it
now had a martyr. Her father accompanied her coffin from California Adirondacks
On learning of her death, Carl Sandburg wrote a poem. It read:
They are crying salt tears
They are crying salt tears
Over the beautiful beloved body
Of Inez Milholland,
Because they are glad she lived,
Because she loved open-armed,
Throwing love for a cheap thing
Belonging to everybody-
Cheap as sunlight,
And morning air.
On Christmas Day in 1916, Alice Paul’s National
Women’s Party held the first memorial service in the Capitol. Statuary Hall was
decorated with pennants of purple, white and gold, the Party's colors. Mabel
Younger, a suffragist from California ,
was selected as keynote speaker.
When Younger protested she was unequal to the task, the
indomitable Paul responded, “Nonsense. Just write something like Lincoln ’s
Gettysburg Address.”
Less eloquent than Lincoln
Eight years later, in August of 1924, the National Women’s
Party held its convention in the North Country . Ten thousand persons turned out in the small town of Lewis ,
N.Y. to honor the courageous fighter who did not live to see the women’s vote
amendment become a reality.
Inez Milholland’s grave lies atop a quiet knoll in the
cemetery next to the Congregational church in Lewis. Almost a century after her
death, few know where her grave is. Even fewer visit it these days.
