SUFFRAGIST SONGS | Valerie diLorenzo

L to R: Amanda Borsack Jones, John Tepper Marlin and
Valerie diLorenzo. A rousing show.

November 19, 2017 – Valerie diLorenzo brought the mostly female crowd to their feet today after she smoothly belted out 15 songs dedicated to votes for women.

The event, titled "Ladies of Liberty", celebrated the 100th anniversary of the right of women to vote being recognized by the male voters and government of the State of New York.

The musical director was Amanda Borsack Jones. An East Hampton native, she accompanied Valerie on the piano, provided occasional background music for the commentary between songs, and sang the alto part for some of the songs.

The full audience at the Southampton Arts Center joined in singing four songs that were included in the program. I thought "The Right of Every Woman" (sung to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic") was especially effective, and also "Claim Our Liberty" (to the tune of "My Country 'Tis of Thee").

Among the series of solos, especially memorable was "You Don't Own Me".

Valerie is a versatile singer and raconteur, comfortable at the microphone. She has sung the national anthem for the Mets for more than 15 seasons. Her list of singing and acting credits is long.

It was a fun evening and after the event I got to spend some time with friends:

• The Fensterers, musician Janet and singer Victoria, who recently got married.
• Cathy Peacock, who helped organize the event.
• Other officers of the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons.

I'm hoping that the last of the one-time competitive friction between the predecessor of the League, NAWSA (the National American Woman Suffrage Association), and the National Woman's Party can be ended. 

I thought The New York Times expressed it well in a contemporary editorial when they said that the "gold pen" of credit for getting the 19th Amendment passed goes to NAWSA and the "silver inkstand" of credit goes to the mostly younger people who created the more activist authority-challenging NWP.

The story of how Woodrow Wilson changed his mind about supporting the Anthony Amendment needs to be told whenever its passage is celebrated.

WILSON | Oct. 2 – Felled by Stroke

Woodrow Wilson

October 2, 2017 – This day in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke.

It happened after he curtailed an 8,000-mile  national tour to promote U.S. membership in the League of Nations. The trip cost Wilson his health.

Wilson's tour had its parallel in the tour that Inez Milholland Boissevain undertook in 1916 to campaign against Wilson for not supporting the Anthony Amendment.

Both Inez and the President suffered constant headaches during their tours. Both finally collapsed – Inez in October 1916 in Los Angeles, Wilson in September 1919 in Pueblo, Colorado.

Both failed in their mission, but contributed to it, and had their health not given out might have seen their goals achieved. Inez failed to defeat Wilson, although the California vote was so close the results were weeks in becoming final – but her death was the inciting incident in the picketing of the White House, and the Anthony Amendment was passed with Wilson's support in 1919, with ratification as the 19th Amendment the following year.

Similarly, Wilson's campaign for membership in a world body was ended by his collapse, but was achieved after his death in 1945, with U.S. membership in the United Nations.

After his collapse, Wilson returned to Washington, but suffered a massive stroke on October 2. Wilson’s wife Edith blamed it on Wilson's Republican Congressional opponents, because they attacked Wilson personally on issues relating to the League of Nations.

Edith kept quiet the extent of Wilson’s incapacitation. While Wilson lay in bed motionless, Edith is reported to have screened his messages, and sometimes signed her husband's name without consulting him.

In her memoirs she said she acted as her husband's steward. Her husband continued to serve as President and partly regained his health, but remained paralyzed on one side. He did not return to his campaign for U.S. membership in the League, and the United States never joined, since Republican Warren Harding was opposed and he was elected President in 1920. Wilson died in 1924.

INEZ LTRS | Oct. 3, 1916–Letter, EJB to IMB Letter (PG13) Updated Oct 30, 2016)

Harmon, N.Y. Eugen and Inez. That might be Jude,
their dog. The little girl is probably related to Max
Eastman, who had previously moved to Harmon.
Photo in collection of JT Marlin.

Inez Milholland Boissevain collapsed in Los Angeles while speaking to a suffragist rally on Oct. 23, 1916.

Her husband Eugen Jan Boissevain was in New York City while Inez was on tour with her sister Vida in the western states, where women voted. 

Inez was seeking to persuade them not to vote for Woodrow Wilson because he did not support the Anthony Amendment.

Eugen appears to have written at least 11 letters to Inez between Oct. 3 and Oct. 20, 1916. When he heard of her collapse and hospitalization he went west to be with her. She died on Nov. 25, 1916. Her eulogist Maud Younger described Inez as dying "like a soldier, on the battlefield".

The dates of Eugen's letters in October 1916 are as follows, with tentative identification of their order.

The original letters are sometimes undated, which means the dates are guesswork based on clues in the letters themselves. The date on this letter seems to be October 3, but that doesn't match the calendar of Inez's trip because she didn't get to Cheyenne Wyoming that early.

Green line=main Union Pacific Railway (UPRR). Red line=
Utah & Northern Railway, which connects Salt Lake City with Butte
and Helena, Mont. and became part of UPRR. Thanks to Spellerweb.

DATES OF LETTERS IN OCTOBER 1916
3 (11th last)
9? (10th last)
11 (9th last)
15 (8th last)
16 (7th last)
16 (6th)
17 (5th)
17 (4th)
18 (3rd)
19 (2nd)
20 (last)




EJB to IMB (PG-13), Dated Oct.  3, Postmarked Oct. 10  [1 of 11 letters in October]

EUGEN BOISSEVAIN & CO., INC.

Exporters & Importers

27 William Street, New York

[Superscript:] I am very happy. have had a gloriously jolly week-end.–Love me. – Love me strong and hard and passionately. – And come back soon. – Rangy [one of Inez's nicknames for Eugen].

My white skinned, long limbed lover,

I have just had dinner, have brought Mrs. Chipais home, and am sitting at the big round table. Jude [the dog] is playing around. I am dreadfully excited, sexually – I long for you. I close my eyes and I see your glorious, voluptuous body. I smell your white, warm, clinging perfume.

John [Jan Boissevain, his younger brother?] said yesterday that everytime he comes into our room he felt like raping someone, that the perfume of the room, & everything went to his head. Bless the boy!

I just had your letter written on the train to Cheyenne [Wyoming; this calls into question the date]. Your visit to the doctor excited me terribly [she had described his examination of her in taunting terms], but all the same I would like to beat his quasi-scientific head and hands. I am so happy that you went to a Dr., Nan [Eugen's most common nickname for Inez].–And I hope he is right. Please do not smoke. [She had complained of throat problems. Eugen imported tobacco from Turkey before he switched to importing coffee from Java.] – We'll go to another doctor together and fix you up. – You poor darling, having this dirty tonsils bothering you. But I am so madly glad that you are alright down there. [The doctor had said there was no reason she couldn't have a child.]

Darling Nan,–I have a lot to say about all kinds of things, but I'm only going to say things you know already, but things I want to say. And this is the only paper I can find in the house. [He had started to write to his mother, Emily Heloïse MacDonnell Boissevain, the previous month, and crossed it out.] – I love you excitedly, wickedly. – I want you. – I keep making exciting pictures about you, and about all the things I want to do to you, and am going to do. I want to kiss you all over. I have not kissed you, your beautiful naked body half enough. I want to play with you, love you, and 69, and O Nan, dear, I want you so.

I have slept now for 3 nights I'm so excited now. I don't want to sleep any more. I want you back, I want to tear your clothes off, and hold you naked in my arms. – Be careful about your body. Look after it. Look after it for me, it's mine, all mine. – I'm looking after mine. I'm gathering and accumulating a dangerous amount of passion when I see you again. Keep your body strong and clean for your lover, your passionate, hungry lover.

I want you, I want your nubile white long limbed lover's-body. I want you so badly, so madly. I kiss you, dear, I kiss you. I love you. Always yours, Eugen.

Related Posts: Oct. 23–Inez Collapses in LA

Newspaper stories along the route:

• “Beauty Contest to Be Part of the Great Suffrage Parade,” Laramie Republican, February 1, 1913, 2.
• “Cheyenne Woman Routs Speaker of Sex Party,” Sunday State Leader, October 8, 1916, 1.
• “Dawn Mist of Montana in Parade,” Weekly Boomerang, February 27, 1913, 4.
• “Death of Miss Inez Milholland Boissevain,” Rock Springs Miner, December 2, 1916, 6.
• “Extension Phones for Mrs. Boissevain’s Talk,” Wyoming Tribune, November 4, 1916, 1.
• “Famous Woman Spoke at Pocatello,” Kemmerer Republican, October 13, 1916, 1.
• “Memorial for Inez Milholland Boissevain,” Park County Enterprise, December 27, 1916, 4.
• “Memorial to Mrs. Boissevain,” Kemmerer Republican, December 29, 1916.
• “Miss Inez Milholland: Equal Suffrage Advocate Is Made the Heroine of a Novel,” Laramie Republican, November 11, 1911, 5.
• “Noted Beauty Coming,” Laramie Republican, October 4, 1916, 8.
• “Rioting Mars the Suffrage Parade,” Laramie Boomerang, March 4, 1913, 1.
• “Sing Sing Inmates Honor Suffragist,” Laramie Daily Boomerang, December 7, 1916, 1.
• “Successful Meeting at Plains Hotel,” Laramie Republican, 11 Oct 1916, 6.
• “Washington’s Discourtesy to Women,” Wyoming Semi-Weekly Tribune, March 11, 1913, 6.
• “Washington City’s Insult to Women,” Wyoming Semi-Weekly Tribune, March 11, 1913, 6.
• “Women Outline Political Views,” Kemmerer Republican, October 27, 1916.
• “Women Unfurl Their First Battle Flag,” Laramie Daily Boomerang, December 7, 1916, 1.

INEZ | 5A. Sept. 30–Wilson Supports Anthony Amendment

Wilson opposed the Anthony
Amendment until Sept. 30, 1917.

On this day in 1918 President Woodrow Wilson endorsed the Anthony Amendment, having opposed it during his re-election year of 1916.

The House of Representatives approved the amendment to give women the right to vote in Federal elections, the Senate had yet to vote for it. Until the amendment was passed and ratified (as it was in August 1920), it was up to each state to decide who would vote in Federal elections.

Wilson opposed the Anthony Amendment in his first term and in his re-election campaign in 1916. Inez Milholland went on a whistle-stop speaking tour with her sister Vida to get women to vote against Wilson in the western territories, where women had the right to vote in Federal elections.

She noted that Wilson had opposed suffrage for women. He may have kept us out of the war, she said, but he also "kept us out of suffrage".

Inez Milholland Boissevain died in Los Angeles in November 1916 after having collapsed on stage - exhausted by her campaign and ignoring serious illness - and a delegation of women called on Wilson in early 1917 to ask him to reconsider supporting woman suffrage because of the death of Inez Milholland. (Wilson in the White House video.)

Inez Milholland and her sister Vida conducted a whistle-
stop tour in 1916 to campaign against Wilson for not
supporting the Anthony Amendment.

Wilson scornfully dismissed the women from the National Woman's Party as being politically naive and they reacted by instituting a nonstop picket of the White House. The protests reached a crescendo when several women were arrested, jailed and went on a hunger strike. Wilson was appalled to learn that the jailed suffragists were being force-fed and he finally stepped in to champion their cause.

Rather than give any credit to the picketers, Wilson attributed his change of heart to the debt that America owed to the country’s women. In his September 30 speech to Congress, Wilson said:

We have made partners of the women in this war… Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right?

However, the bill died in the Senate and it would be another year before Congress finally passed the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote.

INEZ | 5B. Aug. 18 - Women Get the Vote [4]

Picketing Wilson's White House in 1917

On this date in 1920, 95 years ago, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, making it the law of the land.

The 19th Amendment extended the franchise to all women. Previously, some states allowed women to vote, but it was a state option.

Credit for being the state that put the Amendment over the top - 36 out of the 48 states were required - goes to Tennessee, although Connecticut was ready to vote in favor if Tennessee failed.

The so-called "Anthony Amendment", named after suffragist Susan B. Anthony, was first proposed in Congress in 1878, and in every subsequent Congress.

After Susan B. Anthony died in Rochester in 1906, young women feared that the Anthony Amendment might languish. New suffragist leaders emerged in women's colleges and some of them - including Alice Paul and Inez Milholland - trained with the suffragettes led by Mrs. Pankhurst in Britain.

Milholland energized Vassar students before her graduation in 1909. When she graduated, the harassed President, James Monroe Taylor, said to her father, John E. Milholland: "Wonderful girl. I'm glad she's gone."

In 1912 Milholland led on horseback a suffrage parade down Fifth Avenue in New York. In 1913 she led on horseback a parade from the Capitol to the White House. Three years later she campaigned against Woodrow Wilson on a single issue - his not supporting the Anthony Amendment.

Milholland died during her campaign of "pernicious anemia" - what we would diagnose today as a Vitamin B12 deficiency. She collapsed while giving a speech against Wilson in Los Angeles. She died six weeks later.

A delegation of women visited Wilson in January 1917, and he ridiculed their appeal to him in the name of Milholland's death, saying they were ignorant of politics. The women from the National Woman's Party immediately started a non-stop picket of the White House. Eventually, the District of Columbia police arrested the picketers and they were taken to a Lorton, Md. workhouse for women. There they began a hunger strike. The news reports gradually changed public opinion in favor of suffrage.

Worn down by the pickets and World War I, Wilson finally got behind the Anthony Amendment and in 1919 it narrowly passed both houses of Congress. Most Southern states opposed the amendment, and on August 18, 1920, the Tennessee legislature was in line to be the last needed state to ratify the Amendment.

The suffragists wore yellow roses in their lapels, and the anti-suffragists wore red American Beauty roses. The state legislature was tied 48 to 48. Only one legislator was undecided, 24-year-old Harry Burn, the youngest. He had been expected to vote against it, but he had in his pocket a note from his mother, which read:

Dear Son: Hurrah, and vote for suffrage! Don't keep them in doubt. I noticed some of the speeches against. They were bitter. I have been watching to see how you stood, but have not noticed anything yet. Don't forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the 'rat' in ratification. Your Mother.

He voted in favor and the 19th Amendment to the Constitution became law.