VOTES FOR WOMEN | Turning Point Suffrage Memorial Open!

May 16, 2021—The Turning Point Suffrage Memorial was formally opened today. 

The  program was well thought out, was preceded and followed by well-executed videos, and the memorial itself was shown in an inspiring way.

I was personally pleased to see that the old feuds between the activists (Inez Milholland was proud to call herself a suffragette) of the National Woman's Party and the legislation-oriented suffragists in NAWSA were united in their support of the memorial.

Also, it was encouraging to see the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority properly represented. It was originally an offshoot of Alpha Sorority at Howard University. Its twenty-two members were allowed to join the suffrage march in 1913. A century later, the Deltas were the main participants!

Congratulations to Jane Barker and Pat Wirth for pulling this off.

Here's a YouTube video prepared for showing before and after the show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sSlMlbAEHE

Here is the Farifax County attractions listing:

https://www.fxva.com/listing/turning-point-suffragist-memorial/2080/

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.

19TH AMENDMENT | Credit for Success, Pen and Inkstand

Gold pen awarded to NAWSA after the
 Senate passed the Anthony Amendment.

A gold pen looms large in the final days of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which recognized the right of all adult American women to vote in elections.

After the passage of the Anthony Amendment in the Senate, a gold pen used in signing the law was awarded to NAWSA. This became a source of irritation to the National Woman's Party, which was originally an offshoot of NAWSA but became independent.

After the August 26, 1920 signing of the ratification of the 19th Amendment by Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby, he said that the pen he used to sign off on the ratification, as is required under the Constitution, was a standard steel pen, not a gold one.

The New York Times editorial suggested that two rival suffrage organizations, jockeying to take credit, both deserved credit. So while the gold pen may have gone to NAWSA, a silver inkstand should go to the National Woman's Party. A detailed analysis by the Library of Congress of the final days before President Woodrow Wilson changed his mind about supporting the Anthony Amendment shows that the initiatives were constantly emanating from the National Woman's Party, at great personal cost to the activists. It would be a great injustice to minimize the role of the activists, just as it would also be unfair to ignore the long years of patient lobbying undertaken by NAWSA.

Colby suggests that the pen he used to sign the certification of the 19th Amendment would end up in the Smithsonian. I don't know if this happened.

But the gold pen used in the signing of the Senate's approval of what had been called the Anthony Amendment is indeed at the Smithsonian. It  is part of the Women's History Collections, Political Collections of the Division of Social History in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

CENTENNIAL | Sep 7–Catt's Atlanta Speech (Updated Apr 6, 2017)

Carrie Chapman Catt (1859-1947), née Carrie Clinton Lane.

She gave a rousing speech for suffrage in 1916, as the National

Woman's Party was touring the country for Votes for Women.

Sep 7, 2016—This day 100 years ago, in Atlanta, Carrie Chapman Catt gave one of the great speeches of the 20th century.


She was trying to get women to support a federal suffrage amendment.

Her goal was to rally her suffragist troops in one of the most difficult parts of the country.  

She was born Carrie Clinton Lane on January 9, 1859 in Ripon, Wisc. (birthplace also of the Republican Party).

Carrie was the only woman in her class of 1880 from Iowa State College. She graduated first in her class. 

She became a teacher and then Superintendent of Schools in Mason City, Iowa and married newspaper editor Leo Chapman in 1885. Chapman, sadly, died of typhoid fever a year later. 

In 1890, Carrie was married again, to Iowa State alum George Catt, an engineer. Their pioneering prenup allowed her to devote two months in the spring and two months in the fall to suffrage issues. That same year, the two main U.S. organizations advocating suffrage, the NWSA and the AWSA, came together as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) through the work of Anna Howard Shaw and others.

In 1894, Carrie Catt supported Susan B. Anthony’s argument that the existing U.S. electoral system included many ignorant men who posed “great danger” to America, while excluding many educated women.  In the face of strong resistance in southern states to adding more people to the electorate, Anthony and Catt considered some kind of educational test or standard that would allow educated women to replace less-educated men.

Anthony in 1900 selected Catt to be her successor as president of NAWSA in 1900-1904. Catt decided that the organization was diffusing its resources by plodding along in every state. To  speed things up, she decided to focus all of the organization's resources on getting a federal amendment.  Subsequently labeled her “Winning Plan,” she sought to prioritize and refocus NAWSA's work  in different states: 

• In states that had passed legislation recognizing women's right to vote in presidential elections, mostly in the West, NAWSA sought passage of a federal suffrage (Anthony) amendment.
• In states that did not have presidential suffrage, but where there was a prospect of successfully amending their state constitution, NAWSA pressed for a referendum.
• In most other states, NAWSA worked toward presidential suffrage via the legislature.
• In Southern states, where prospects were weak, NAWSA just sought suffrage in the primaries.

Catt resigned her position as NAWSA president in 1904 to look after her ailing husband George Catt. He died in 1905, leaving Carrie with an independent income; four months later, in February 1906, Susan B. Anthony died. 

Anna Howard Shaw took over NAWSA between 1904 and 1915 and by the end of her presidency NAWSA had 44 state auxiliaries, each with local branches, and more than two million members.  

In the first decade of the 20th century, NAWSA was based primarily in New York City, where several large donors were located. In December 1912 NAWSA hired Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, who had recently been in London and had worked with the Pankhursts on suffrage campaigns, to revitalize NAWSA's Congressional Committee in Washington, D.C. This morphed after the successful parade of March 1913 into the more independent Congressional Union and then in 1916 into the National Woman’s Party, as its activist leaders (notably Paul and Burns) parted ways from the larger and slower-moving NAWSA. 

Catt once again headed up NAWSA in the key years 1915-1920, and at President Wilson's request in 1917 pledged that NAWSA would support the war effort.  Catt created war-effort departments within NAWSA including Food Conservation, Protection of Women in Industry, and Overseas Hospitals. Catt herself also served in the Women’s Division of the Liberty Loan Committee. The first-ever Congresswoman, pacifist Jeanette Rankin, took her seat at that time. Although Congress took up little legislation unrelated to the war, the House of Representatives joined the Senate in creating a Woman Suffrage Committee, and NAWSA participated in hearings of the Senate's Woman Suffrage Committee. 

NAWSA volunteers were not always available for ongoing suffrage work on the amendment because many had volunteered for war service on the home front. Women’s support for the war effort was one argument used in favor of suffrage when Wilson changed his mind and supported a suffrage amendment in 1917. 

The Congressional Union included many pacifists like Dorothy Day, Crystal Eastman and Inez Milholland who did not support the war effort and focused only on suffrage. After World War I, Catt became a leader in work for world peace.

The House passed the Anthony Amendment on January 10, 1918, after a Congressional speech of support by President Wilson and much effort by suffragists. Catt was received by President Wilson for congratulations and thanks shortly after the vote. When the Amendment was finally passed by both houses of Congress (on the third try) in 1919, Catt led NAWSA’s coast-to-coast effort for its ratification by the then-minimum of 36 states. 

In 1920, having achieved its goal, NAWSA was replaced by the League of Women Voters, which had been founded the previous year.  The League was created to educate the electorate in a non-partisan manner, to register voters, and to encourage women to run for office. Catt’s exceptional organizational skills were vital to achieving American women’s right to vote, and to ensuring that women participate in the electoral and governing process.

Catt developed a strong international presence. In 1902 Catt co-founded and served as president until 1923 of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, active today as the International Alliance of Women. Although she won favor with President Wilson for her work with the American war effort, she later became an active leader for world peace and when she died in 1947 she left her significant estate, including many books, to form the Iowa State Peace Library.

Atlanta Speech Excerpt

Here is an excerpt from the end of the speech that Catt gave in Atlanta 100 years ago, one of two by Catt that rate as among the top 100 speeches of the 20th century:

Shall we play the coward … and leave the hard knocks for our daughters, or shall we throw ourselves into the fray, bare our own shoulders to the blows, and thus bequeath to them a politically liberated womanhood. 

We have taken note of our gains and of our resources! and they are all we could wish. Before the final struggle, we must take cognizance of our weaknesses. Are we prepared to grasp the victory? Alas, no! our movement is like a great Niagara with a vast volume of water tumbling over its ledge but turning no wheel. Our organized machinery is set for the propagandistic stage and not for the seizure of victory. 

Our supporters are spreading the argument for our cause; they feel no sense of responsibility for the realization of our hopes. Our movement lacks cohesion, organization, unity and consequent momentum. 

Behind us, in front of us, everywhere about us are suffragists–millions of them, but inactive and silent. They have been "agitated and educated" and are with us in belief. 

• There are thousands of women who have at one time or another been members of our organization but they have dropped out because, to them the movement seemed negative and pointless. Many have taken up other work whose results were more immediate. Philanthropy, charity, work for corrective laws of various kinds, temperance, relief for working women and numberless similar public services have called them. Others have turned to the pleasanter avenues of club work, art or literature. 

• There are thousands of other women who have never learned of the earlier struggles of our movement. They found doors of opportunity open to them on every side ... but they feel neither gratitude to those who opened the doors through which they have entered to economic liberty nor any sense of obligation to open other doors for those who come after.  

• There are still others who, timorously looking over their shoulders to see if any listeners be near, will tell us they hope we will win and win soon but they are too frightened of Mother Grundy to help. There are others too occupied with the small things of life to help. They say they could find time to vote but not to work for the vote. There are men, too, millions of them, waiting to be called.  

These men and women are our reserves. They are largely unorganized and untrained soldiers with little responsibility toward our movement. Yet these reserves must be mobilized. The final struggle needs their numbers and the momentum those numbers will bring. 

Were never another convert made, there are suffragists enough in this country, if combined, to make so irresistible a driving force that victory might be seized at once. 

How can it be done? By a simple change of mental attitude. If we are to seize the victory, that change must take place in this hall, here and now!

Sources 

Belcher-Hamilton, Lisa. “The League of Women Voters.” Cobblestone, November 1988, pp. 35-6.

Catt, Carrie Chapman, Home of. Carrie Chapman Catt Childhood Home .

Catt, Carrie Chapman. Atlanta Speech, Sept. 7, 1916. “One of the 100 Most Significant American Speeches of the 20th Century.” Analysis of the speech.  

Concise Dictionary of American Biography, 5th Edition, Volume 1. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1997, pp. 199-200.

Current Biography 1940. Maxine Block, ed. New York: H. W. Wilson, 1940, pp. 150-152.

Library of Congress, Carrie Chapman Catt Collection.

Morton, T. , Speed the Plough (1798). This comedy led to the contemporary catchphrase "What will Mrs Grundy say?"

National American Women 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary, Vol. 1. Edward James, ed. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971, pp. 309-13.

National Women’s Hall of Fame, "Women of the Hall".

Reference Library of American Women, Vol.1. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Gale Research, 1999, pp.123-4.

Sherr, Lynn and Jurate Kanzickas. Susan B. Anthony Slept Here: A Guide to American Women’s Landmarks. New York: Random House, 1994.

Turning Point Suffragist Memorial website. Plan for a suffrage memorial in Lorton, Va.

Webster’s American Biographies. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, Inc., 1984, pp. 67-8.

Women’s Almanac. Volume 2: Society. Linda Schmittroth and Mary Reilly McCall, eds. Detroit: UXL – Gale Research, 1997, pp. 250-51.

BIRTH | June 11–Jeannette Rankin, "First Lady of the House"

Jeannette Rankin, First Lady of the House, c.
1917. (Photo from Library of Congress.)

This day was born Jeannette Pickering Rankin, near Missoula, in 1880, in what was then the Territory of Montana (she was nine years old when it became the 41st U.S. State). She was a feminist and a pacifist:

• The first woman elected to Congress, in 1916.
• The only woman who voted (in 1917) to give women the right to vote.
• The only Member of Congress to vote against U.S. entry in both World War I and World War II.

The eldest daughter of a rancher and a schoolteacher, she graduated in 1902 from Montana State University, now the University of Montana, and then attended the New York School of Philanthropy, now the Columbia University School of Social Work.

After serving as a social worker in Spokane, Washington, Rankin entered the University of Washington in Seattle, where she joined the reinvigorated woman suffrage movement that obtained votes for women in Washington State in 1910.

Rankin then became a professional lobbyist for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and in 1914 helped get Montana voters to support votes for women in that state. Rankin decided in 1916 to run for a House seat from Montana based on her reputation as a suffragist and the support of her brother Wellington Rankin. [Her cause would have been supported by Inez Milholland when she came through Montana in October 1916.]

In 1916 Rankin won the Republican nomination. In that era, Republicans were still associated with Lincoln and until 1932 were considered the more progressive party. Rankin pledged to work for a Federal woman suffrage amendment and for more social welfare, and made clear her opposition to the United States joining what was seen as the "European" war.

Rankin's campaign in a Democratic state had a nonpartisan flavor at a time when both political parties were suspect. She came in second, winning one of Montana’s two at-large (since it was a new state) seats in the House, 7,600 votes behind the Democrat in first place and 6,000 votes ahead of another Democrat in third place.  Her commitment to woman suffrage helped her in a state where women were voting for the first time.

On April 2, 1917, she was sworn in as a member of the 65th Congress (1917–1919), dubbed "The First Lady of the House". When her name was called the House cheered and rose. She then stood up and bowed twice. That evening, Congress met in extraordinary Joint Session to hear President Woodrow Wilson ask to “make the world safe for democracy” by declaring war on Germany because it had declared submarine warfare on Atlantic shipping. The House debated the war resolution on April 5. Her suffrage colleagues  asked her not to oppose the war, fearing that this a would tarnish their cause. Rankin was silent during the war debate, which she regretted afterwards, but she voted against it, one of 50, with 374 in favor. The Helena Independent said she was

a dagger in the hands of the German propagandists, a dupe of the Kaiser, a member of the Hun army in the United States, and a crying schoolgirl.

NAWSA said that Rankin was not voting on behalf of women, but on behalf of Montana, but  Rep. Fiorello LaGuardia of New York, later Mayor of New York City, defended her,.

Later in 1917 she called for the creation of a Committee on Woman Suffrage. It was created she was appointed to it. The special committee reported out the so-called Anthony Amendment to the Constitution, recognizing women's right to vote, in January 1918, Rankin opened the first House Floor debate on this subject. She said:

How shall we answer the challenge, gentlemen? How shall we explain to them the meaning of democracy if the same Congress that voted to make the world safe for democracy refuses to give this small measure of democracy to the women of our country?

The resolution narrowly passed the House amid the cheers of women in the galleries, but it died in the Senate.

At the end of her first term, Rankin decided to run for the U.S. Senate. In a three-way contest, Rankin came in second in the Republican senatorial primary, less than 2,000 votes behind the winner. She ran in the general election on a third-party ticket, finishing third, with one-fifth of the votes cast, while the incumbent won re-election with a plurality.

Afterwards, Rankin divided her time between pacifism and social welfare, working with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Rankin and becoming the leading lobbyist and speaker for the National Council for the Prevention of War in 1929-1939. During the early 1920s she was also a field secretary for the National Consumers’ League, lobbying Congress to pass social welfare legislation, such as the Sheppard–Towner bill and a constitutional amendment banning child labor.

The looming war crisis in 1940 brought Rankin back to Congress. She returned to Montana with her eye on the western House district held by first-term Republican Representative Jacob Thorkelson—an outspoken anti-Semite. Rankin drew on her status as the first woman elected to Congress to speak throughout the district to high school students on the issue of war and peace. When the Republican primary results were in, Rankin defeated three candidates, including the incumbent. Her endorsements included Sen. Robert M. LaFollette, Jr., of Wisconsin and Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia of New York City. Rankin won re-election to the House with 54 percent of the votes, nearly a quarter-century after she was elected to her first term.

As it had in her first term, the threat of war dominated the start of Rankin’s second. After the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, FDR addressed a Joint Session of Congress, and then the House and Senate deliberated on a declaration of war. Rankin repeatedly tried to gain recognition once the first reading of the war resolution was completed in the House. In the brief debate on the resolution, Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas refused to recognize her, declaring her out of order. The war resolution passed the House 388–1. She was immediately condemned widely for her vote against the war.  She only voted “present” when the House declared war on Germany and Italy. She chose not to run for re-election in 1942, and her district replaced the isolationist Republican with an internationalist Democrat who had served in three branches of the military, Mike Mansfield.

After she left the Congress, India became one of her favorite places to visit, as she was drawn by the nonviolent protest tactics of Mohandas K. Gandhi. During the Vietnam War, she led the Jeannette Rankin Brigade, numbering 5,000, in a protest march on Wash­ington in January 1968 that culminated in the presentation of a peace petition to House Speaker John McCormack of Massachusetts. Her 90th birthday in 1970 was celebrated in the Rayburn House Office Building with a reception and dinner. At the time of her death, on May 18, 1973, in Carmel, Calif., Rankin was considering another run for a House seat to protest the Vietnam War.

INEZ | Famed Parade Leader Forgotten

This iconic poster is based on the painting that
hangs in the lobby of the Sewall-Belmont
House in Washington next the Hart Senate
Office Building, was above the mantelpiece. 

February 28, 1913–The Washington Post yesterday, has a story on Inez Milholland from the perspective of the great contrast between her huge contemporary fame and the memory of her contribution to woman suffrage. 

Inez, Suffragette

The story is well told by Lonnae O'Neal Parker, who correctly calls Inez a "suffragette". 

Among the comments (28 when I last looked, several of them mine), one said "suffragette" was the wrong word and "suffragist" was correct. But in fact "suffragette" was not a word that either Inez or Alice Paul shrunk from. It connotes a willingness to be active ("in your face" we might say today) in pursuit of Votes for Women.

Inez trained with the self-styled Pankhurst suffragettes in England, when her father John E. Milholland had a house in London while he tried to get business for his pneumatic tubes from the British Post Office. Alice Paul was also with the suffragettes in London when she was recruited to take over NAWSA's then-moribund Congressional Committee.

The suffragettes were not embarrassed by standing on street corners and shouting "Votes for Women." Dignified ladies preferred to work behind the scenes, but the suffragettes said they had waited long enough for this low-profile approach to bear fruit. They took to the streets.

The parade in Washington was organized by the Alice-Paul-run Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). The Committee later broke away from NAWSA and became the independent National Woman's Party. 

Both groups played a part in obtaining votes for women and hostility between the groups is unfortunate and unnecessary.

The long-term lobbying of NAWSA was important, but the chain of causation that led to final passage of the 19th Amendment can only be traced via the National Woman's Party. 

The parade 100 years ago is what emboldened the radicals to break off and pursue their own attention-getting campaign. Google "Inez Milholland Boissevain" (her married name) and for a "forgotten woman" you will find a lot of gigabytes of information about her.

No Memorial to Inez

One of the commenters said that there should be a statue to Inez Milholland in Washington. Several people thought this was a great idea. It could be located in one of the squares along Massachusetts Avenue west of the Capitol, where it crosses the grid.

Stanton Square is the other direction, a few blocks east of the Capitol. The square itself is named after Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War during the Civil War. Maybe no one would object if the name of the square was shared between him and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The square was the location of the first campaign headquarters of two-term President Barack Obama.

The statue in Stanton Square is not of Stanton but rather of Nathanael Greene, a soldier in George Washington's army after whom is named Greensboro, NC–birthplace of Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY). 

It is in good condition, i.e., not a candidate for rider replacement. But maybe the National Park Service could come up with a candidate for redeploying one of the many handsome warhorse statues in Washington, DC. They would need to find one where the horse is solid but the rider is worn out by rain, or is by a mediocre sculptor and does not have a family or an institution to object vociferously to replacing the rider.

Iron-Jawed Angels

Another commenter on the Washington Post story recommends the movie Iron-Jawed Angels, wthe première of which I saw in Philadelphia. It tells the 19th Amendment story from Alice Paul's point of view. Alice Paul was a behind-the-scenes organizer, and a good one. She knew that Inez Milholland was the perfect woman to put in front of the public as the figurehead of the parade of the National Woman's Party. Inez would capture the affection of both men and women. Inez was happy to play that role.

But when Inez got sick in 1916 on her national campaign with her sister Vida, she should have stopped. Instead, spurred on by Alice Paul, she carried on until her collapse and death. In the movie, Paul is stricken with remorse.

We need another movie, from the perspective of Inez Milholland and the inspiration she was for the rest of the woman's movement. It would be a more interesting movie! In Iron-Jawed Angels (2004), Inez was played by Julia Ormond, who was then 39, nine years older than Hilary Swank, who played Alice Paul. Actually, Inez was younger than Alice Paul, not to mention rated "the fairest of the Amazons" by The New York Times editors, who normally don't get into rating the fairness of women.

Picketing the White House 

The picketing of the White House in 1917, started because President Wilson dissed a delegation of women from the National Woman's Party who appealed to him with 250 memorials of inez Milholland Boissevain's death. The emotional reaction is hard to understand unless you appreciate the contrast between the affection people had for Inez and the President's ivory-tower lecture to the delegation on its ignorance of political reality.

The National Woman's Party was then across Lafayette Park. The angry, fuming women left the White House and immediately started picketing in front of the White House gates, calling themselves the Silent Sentinels. The ignorance of political reality was more on the President's side than on the side of the National Woman's Party.

This phase is called the Turning Point by the Turning Point Suffrage Memorial group, which wants to create a memorial to the suffragists at the Workhouse (prison) in Lorton, Virginia, where the women were brought when President Wilson signaled his impatience with the picketing. In prison, the women - including Inez's sister Vida Milholland - went on a hunger strike and were force-fed, and that is when the tide of public opinion turned in favor of the suffragists. In changing his mind, Wilson referred to the good work of women in the war effort, but when the 19th Amendment was passed the New York Times gave credit both to the good ladies of NAWSA and the more radical women (young and old) of the NWP, giving one the silver pen and the other the gold inkstand.

Remembering the 1913 Parade, 100 Years Later

The parade on Sunday is sponsored by Delta Sigma Theta, a black sorority at Howard University. Back in 1913, when they asked the National Woman's Party if they could be in the parade, the initial response was that it would be awkward because the southern membership of NAWSA would be upset. 

Inez Milholland got wind of this and talked to Alice Paul about it and the sorority was allowed to march, but they were put safely towards the back of the parade. The National Woman's Party became very brave by 1917 but in 1913 they were just the Congressional Committee of NAWSA, which itself was a merger of two suffrage groups (NWSA and AWSA, if I remember correctly) that had split over tactics when it appeared that non-white men would be added to the electorate before white women. Former slave Frederick Douglass was a key advocate in 1848 for the first Women's Convention to go for votes for women. But when during the Civil War it came to a choice between enfranchising black men or white women, he could only go one way.

INEZ | Her Herald Uniform 1913 (Update Aug. 5, 2016)

1. Alice Paul's idea of Inez Milholland's
1913 costume as the Herald. The trumpet
was a non-starter; hard to handle that and
the horse at the same time.

The Woman Suffrage "Procession" was scheduled on the eve of Woodrow Wilson's first inauguration, on March 2, 1913.

Alice Paul, on behalf of the newly formed Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), asked Inez to lead the parade.

The Congressional Committee the following month, emboldened by the success of the parade, became the Congressional Union. In 1916 this entity, with significant new funding, became the National Woman's Party.

Alice Paul asked Inez to be a Herald and wear a uniform emblazoned with the three colors of the suffrage movement – gold, white and purple (in heraldic lingo – or, argent and purpure).

These are the colors that Inez is shown wearing on the flyers about the parade.

2. Inez Milholland on "Gray Dawn" (loaned by
Mr. A. D. Addison of Washington) at the
start of the parade. Photo: Library of Congress.

But Inez decided that an all-white–or, in The New York Times account, a pale blue–cloak looked better. Alice Paul was unhappy about it, but what could she do?

The white uniform was a success. The day after the parade, the N Y Times story devoted its early paragraphs to Inez's striking appearance at the head of the parade.

Later in the story, we are told that the event was marred by violence – the D.C. police were unable or unwilling to keep order, and cavalry from Fort Myer, Va. had to be brought in to keep the peace.

The Washington Post called Inez "the most beautiful suffragette" (this source also has a great collection of postcard photos of the parade).

What do you think? Photos of the actual event show Inez like a clothed Lady Godiva – white gown on a white horse.

The iconic poster of Inez, 1923 for the
 "Forward into Light" pageant at
Meadowmount, Lewis, N.Y.

One of those photos served as the image used to create the iconic posthumous portrait of Inez on a horse. For decades until 2011 it hung over the mantelpiece in the Sewall-Belmont House, now renamed the Belmont-Paul National Monument,  in Washington. (The mantelpiece was removed because of chimney leaks.)

The iconic painting was in bad condition and was carefully restored with the assistance of a Committee headed by Al Boissevain and Allegra Milholland.

The poster made from the painting inspired the National Woman's Party picketers and hunger strikers.

When Inez was married in July 1913, the New York Times expressed regret that a Hollander with a French name (Boissevain) had nabbed Milholland, the daughter of a Scotch Irish man (the family name Milholland is an Anglo-Irish transliteration of a Gaelic word meaning Follower of St. Chulann).

The Times described Inez as "the Fairest of the Amazons".

Related Posts: Suffrage Play June 11, 2017 in Vienna, Va.
Inez Milholland's Faceted Star Crown-Helmet, 1911