Born: 6 August 1886, United States
Died: 25 November 1916
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Inez Milholland Boissevain
The following is republished from the National Park Service. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Inez Milholland Boissevain was an American suffragist and labor lawyer. She is best known for leading the 1913 women’s suffrage parade in Washington, D.C., dressed in a flowing white cloak and crown and riding a white horse. Though she took advantage of her reputation as “the most beautiful suffragette,” her commitment to social change was far from symbolic. She was a talented speaker and a passionate advocate for women’s rights, socialism, and pacifism.
Inez Milholland was born to a wealthy family in Brooklyn, New York. She grew up in New York City and London. While in England, she met the militant suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst and became a political radical. As a student at Vassar College, Milholland challenged a rule that banned discussion of suffrage on campus by holding meetings in a nearby cemetery.[1] This defiant spirit would animate her life’s work.
After graduating from Vassar in 1909, Milholland started working as a suffrage orator in New York City. She also advocated for women’s labor rights. She was arrested picketing alongside female shirtwaist and laundry workers during strikes led by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union in 1909 and 1910. She also used her resources as a member of an upper-class family to pay bail for other strikers and organize fundraisers. After being rejected from several law schools because she was a woman, Milholland earned a law degree from New York University in 1912.
On March 3, 1913, Milholland achieved wide fame when she served as the herald of the Woman Suffrage Procession in Washington, D.C. Astride a horse named “Grey Dawn” and dramatically dressed in white to represent the “New Woman” of the twentieth century, she led thousands of women down Pennsylvania Avenue in the first organized march on Washington.[2] Her work for women’s rights continued after the parade. She gave numerous suffrage speeches in the United States and England. She also campaigned for pacifism as World War I brewed in Europe.
During an Atlantic Ocean crossing to England in 1913, Milholland met a Dutch coffee importer named Eugen Jan Boissevain. She proposed to him while they were still aboard the ship. They were married shortly after they landed. Boissevain supported and encouraged his wife’s work.
Over the next few years Milholland began to experience poor health from pernicious anemia.[3] She refused to stop her activism. In 1916, she started a suffrage tour of the Western United States. On October 22, she collapsed while giving a speech in Los Angeles. Audience members reported that the last words she said before collapsing were addressed to Woodrow Wilson: “Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?” Inez Milholland died a few weeks later at the age of thirty.
After Milholland’s death, her husband Eugen Jan Boissevain remarried another famous woman: the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.[4] In 1923, Millay attended a memorial for Milholland at the Portrait Monument to Suffrage Pioneers at the U.S. Capitol. This statue of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony celebrated the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. Millay read a sonnet she had written for the occasion. It urged listeners to carry on the spirit of Milholland’s work for justice and equality.
“To Inez Milholland”
Upon this marble bust that is not I
Lay the round, formal wreath that is not fame;
But in the forum of my silenced cry
Root ye the living tree whose sap is flame.
I, that was proud and valiant, am no more; —
Save as a wind that rattles the stout door,
Troubling the ashes in the sheltered grate.
The stone will perish; I shall be twice dust.
Only my standard on a taken hill
Can cheat the mildew and the red-brown rust
And make immortal my adventurous will.
Even now the silk is tugging at the staff:
Take up the song; forget the epitaph.
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
In 1924, the National Woman’s Party (NWP) held a memorial service in New York to honor Milholland. The NWP did not invite any African American suffragists to participate. Milholland’s father attended the ceremony and invited several guests to speak, including several professors from Howard University, a historically black college. When Milholland’s father found out that the NWP was excluding African Americans from participating, he gave a passionate speech. He spoke to the crowd at the ceremony saying: “I feel duty to speak out. If I did not think her [Milholland’s] spirit would rise up from the grave and say to me, ‘Dad, why were you afraid.’ And so I want to remind you that in the first suffrage parade, Inez herself demanded that the colored women be allowed to march, and now today we were told that it would mar the program to have these guests of mine speak. I have nothing to say except that Inez believed in equal rights for everybody.”
Milholland’s involvement in the women’s suffrage movement inspired the creation of comic book character Wonder Woman. The character’s creator, William Moulton Marston, was a supporter of women’s rights and suffrage. Marston used images of Inez Milholland leading the 1913 suffrage parade in Washington, DC as inspiration for the Wonder Woman comic, “The Milk Racket of Paula Von Gunther.” In the story, Wonder Woman rides on horseback leading a demonstration, much like Milholland did in 1913. Milholland’s legacy fighting for justice and equality lives on in this popular icon.
From Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company:
American woman suffrage leader and lawyer. She graduated in 1909 from Vassar College where she was prominent in athletics and for her championship of radical social ideas.
During a vacation to England, joined Mrs. Pankhurst’s forces, and was arrested in a demonstration.
In 1912 she entered the Law School of New York University and the following year she was married to Eugene Boissevain, a Dutch electrical engineer. During the next three years her enthusiasm an ability as a speaker and organizer made her invaluable to the Woman’s Party, and there was deep regret at her early death, November 25, 1916, at Los Angeles, Cal., where she had been overtaken by illness during a speaking tour made in behalf of woman suffrage.
The following bio was written by Emma Rosen, author of On This Day She Made History: 366 Days With Women Who Shaped the World and This Day In Human Ingenuity & Discovery: 366 Days of Scientific Milestones with Women in the Spotlight, and has been republished with permission.
Inez Milholland was a notable American suffragist, lawyer, and peace activist. She championed women’s rights at Vassar College and famously led the Woman Suffrage Procession on a white horse in 1913. Inez also worked as a labor lawyer and war correspondent, embodying the New Woman’s progressive ideals. During a speaking tour, she died from pernicious anemia, leaving a lasting impact on women’s rights.