Inez Millholland, Extraordinary Suffragist Leader, Dies from Exhaustion
Inez Millholland, extraordinary suffragist leader and political activist, died on this day from exhaustion following a grueling national speaking tour in support of a constitutional amendment to grant women the right to vote.
In the midst of a pro-suffrage speech in Los Angeles on October 22, 1916, Milholland suddenly collapsed. Friends revived her and she managed to finish her speech while seated. After the speech she was rushed to the hospital. Clearly exhausted and suffering from related illnesses, he she remained there until her death.
Milholland and her sister left New York on October 4, 1916 in a planned one moth speaking tour scheduled to visit eleven states throughout the western U.S. Even at the beginning of the tour, Milholland felt ill, experiencing dizzyness, heart palpitations, and neck pains. On her stop in Seattle, a shocked doctor recommended surgery to remove her tonsils. And in Spokane she nearly collapsed on stage. Before a crowd of 1,000 in Los Angeles, she declared rhetorically, “President Wilson, how long must this go on?” She raised her arm to emphasize the point, and then collapsed.
One of the principal themes of the tour was to urge support for Republican presidential candidate Charles Evans Hughes rather than President Woodrow Wilson. Republicans were generally more supportive of women’s suffrage while Wilson had refused to support it.
Milholland is most famous for her role in leading the parade in the March 3, 1913 women’s suffrage procession in Washington, DC, riding a white horse, dressed in a a white cape and wearing a crown. She also led women’s suffrage parades in New York City in 1911, 1912 and 1913.
Born to well-to-do parents, Milholland began her political career as a student at Vasser College, from which she graduated in 1909. While at Vasser she organized meetings in support of women’s suffrage, which had been banned by the college. One meeting was held in a cemetery across the street from the college. At one point Vassar suspended her for he political activity.
After graduating from Vassar, Milholland enrolled at New York University Law School and graduated in 1912. In addition to her deep commitment to women’s suffrage, Milholland was also a socialist, labor union advocate, pacifist and opponent of U.S. entry into World War I, a correspondent in Europe during the war, a supporter of racial justice as a member of the NAACP, a member of the Women’s Trade Union League, and the National Child Labor Committee.
Beginning in early 1917, after Milholland’s death, Alice Paul began organizing militant picketing of the White House in an effort to pressure President Woodrow Wilson to support the suffrage amendment. Three years of militant actions finally secured enactment of the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote.
Read Milholland’s biography: Linda J. Lumsden, Inez: The Life and Times of Inez Milholland (2016)
Read a biography of Suffragist leader Alice Paul: Jill Zahniser and Amelia Fry, Alice Paul: Claiming Power (2014)
Learn more about the history of women’s suffrage, from the 19th Century to the present: Ellen Carol DuBois, Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote (2020)
And more: Mary Walton, A Woman’s Crusade: Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot (2010)
And also read Alice Paul’s Oral History interview: http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt6f59n89c/