#inez milholland

March is Women’s History Month-Suffragette Inez Milholland

An angel on a white horse with black hair, when Inez Milholland rode into history, as the most daring and effective voices of the women’s suffragette movement in the early 1900s, she invoked the image of a Joan of Arc going into battle. Both a socialist and socialite of her era, Milholland became a martyr for the movement, when she died from illness while campaigning for the right to vote in the West.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, on August 6, 1886, Inez grew up in a wealthy household where the fight for human rights was always at the forefront. Her father, John Milholland, was a newspaper writer, as well as a progressive reformer and one of the founders of the NAACP. He remained an avid supporter of his daughter’s activism throughout her life.

Like many socialites of her time, Inez attended finishing school in London and went on to attend Vassar College, where she exceeded expectations not only with her great oratory skills, but in athletics as well. She played basketball, field hockey, and was a member of the 1909 girls track team

A radical activist at college, she introduced the suffrage movement there as well, enrolling students for the cause, even though the college had forbidden it. She went on to receive a law degree from New York University and then joined her first law firm.

It was at the March 3, 1913, Women Suffrage Procession in Washington, D.C., that gave Inez the title of “the most beautiful suffragette.” Wearing a white cape and riding on a white horse, it was this image of a women fighting for the right to vote that managed to sway the opinion of many men in favor of the suffrage movement.

Described as woman with “a spirit like lighting who complicated gender expectations of brains and beauty”, Inez once said ‘women need not play the game of politics.” Her ability to convince her male counterparts that women could have the right to vote, without completely losing their feminity, was part of her success as a spokesperson for the movement.

During the fall of 1916, Inez collapsed while giving a speech in Los Angeles. Suffering from pernicious anemia, she died on November 25, 1916, at the age of thirty. Her last words spoken publicly were, “Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty.”