MILHOLLAND | Sept. 26–John, Sr., Dies, 1895

John Milholland (1819-1895)

John Milholland, father of John E. Milholland and grandfather of Inez Milholland, died in Paterson, N.J. on September 26, 1895.

I have some papers relating to his investment in electricity generation in Essex County, N.Y. but not much is known about him except what his son John E. Milholland wrote about him in his diaries.

Here is the one-paragraph obit in the New York Times, Friday, September 27, 1895, p. 8.

John E. Milholland’s Father Dead  Paterson, N.J., September 26. - John Milholland, 77 years old, father of John E. Milholland of New-York, died here to-day. He was a widower. He was born in the north of Ireland, and came to America when young. He was for many years a farmer. Since 1870 he has made his home with his daughter, Mrs. B. J. Worden of this city. He leaves five children.

John E. Milholland (1860-1925) grave.

***

At the time of his father's death in 1895, John E. Milholland (1860-1925) was riding high. In 1894 his anti-Platt organization in New York City was strong. He disbanded it in 1895. He was a  newspaper editor, labor negotiator, and developer of tubes for mail delivery.

John E. Milholland was born in 1860 on the "Meadowmount" property in Lewis, NY. After a fire that killed his mother and a sister, John Milholland took his son back to Derry in Ireland. John E. Milholland writes of the fire in his diary with great emotion.

The Milhollands returned to the United States. John E. Milholland attracted the interest of a local Congressman in New York City, who arranged for his tuition to be paid. Milholland became editor of the Ticonderoga paper and then the NY Tribune. At the Tribune, John E. became famous for settling the printers' strike with the help of his brother, who was the shop steward of the printing plant.

He organized the Pneumatic Tube Company which built the underground mail tube system in NY. His daughter Inez had a big dispute with him over some ethical issue in the handling of his business affairs. He sold the NY system to the Boston Company. He then built the system for Philadelphia and got a ten-year contract to carry U.S. Mail. He used the money to improve his Meadowmount estate.

He was also one of the last of the Lincoln Republicans, certainly in New York State by the time he died. In 1905, he wrote a book called The Negro and the Nation. It is extensively sourced by Shawn Leigh Alexander in his book An Army of Lions: The Civil Rights Struggle Before the NAACP.  John E. fought the Republican Platt Machine in New York City. As a Scotch-Irish American, he was a staunch Presbyterian.

Milholland took out a one-year lease at 500 Fifth Avenue for the Constitution League, which he founded and had racial injustices at the top of its agenda, including (on its letterhead) over-incarceration, especially racial minorities.

W. E. B. Du Bois was one of his partners in this cause and was involved with the Constitution League in 1906 when it took on a military case. Mary Church Terrell, a civil rights advocate, representing the League, met with Secretary of War William Howard Taft to discuss the Brownsville affair. She asked Taft to suspend the soldiers’ dismissal and to rehear of the case. Meanwhile the League did its own research and succeeded in getting Senate hearings. These interventions resulted in reinstatement of only 14 soldiers out of 167. Sergeant Saunders, 1st sergeant of Company B, 25th Infantry and the recipient of an extant letter dated December 8, 1906 from Terrell with her papers in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division (ID #na011), remained dismissed after 25 years' service, less than two years short of retirement with a pension. In 1972 the army conducted a new investigation and the order of 1906 was reversed but there was only one survivor, Dorsie Willis, who received some compensation.

Milholland was the first Treasurer of the NAACP when it was formed in 1909, perhaps the only WASP member of the founding board. The formation of the NAACP followed the race riots in Springfield, Mass. in 1908. The President was Moorfield Storey of Boston; the Chairman of the Executive Committee was William English Walling; Treasurer was John E. Milholland; Disbursing Treasurer was Oswald Garrison Villard; Executive Secretary was Frances Blascoer; Director of Publicity and Research was Dr. W. E. B. DuBois (the only African American on the Board).

On May 18, I corrected the Wikipedia entry on the NAACP because it omitted the name of John E. Milholland from among the founders. The following is posted on the boissevain.us website:

5/18/08 John E. Milholland Added to NAACP Entry in Wikipedia as First Treasurer. Until today, the Wikipedia entry for NAACP omitted Milholland from its description of the founders. The founding was scheduled for February 12, 1909, the 100th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, and this is considered the founding date of the NAACP although it actually took place in May. The entry reads as of today: "On May 30, 1909, the Niagara Movement conference took place at New York City's Henry Street Settlement House, from which an organization of more than 40 individuals emerged, calling itself the National Negro Committee. Du Bois played a key role in organizing the event and presided over the proceedings. Also in attendance was African-American journalist and anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells-Barnett, co-founder of the NAACP. At a second conference, on May 30, 1910, members formally called the organization the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and elected the first officers (as reported by Mary White Ovington): • National President, Moorfield Storey, Boston • Chairman of the Executive Committee, William English Walling • Treasurer, John E. Milholland (a Lincoln Republican and Presbyterian from New York City and Lewis, NY) • Disbursing Treasurer, Oswald Garrison Villard • Executive Secretary, Frances Blascoer • Director of Publicity and Research, Dr. W. E. B. DuBois." http://www.naacp.org/about/history/howbegan/index.htm

True to his beliefs, Milholland challenged Wilson's postmaster-general on race issues. He paid a big price. Wilson was reelected in 1916, despite the best efforts of his daughters Inez (who gave her life in the effort) and Vida. John E. Milholland lost both his daughter and his company's contract with the U.S. Post Office.

After 1916, he seems to have taken a big step backward in his ability to finance projects, although his letters continue to show his effort to be generous to the causes he believes in. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote asking for $1,000 for a trip to Europe and John E. Milholland wrote back that this amount was his total giving to the Constitution League.

In his later years he was "land poor" - he had a large property in Essex County but not enough money to maintain the lifestyle he had intended for it. Inez's sister Vida writes that she regrets having squandered her jewelry on travel expenses to accompany Inez in 1916.

In August 1924 he had a Swan Song, as he again complained about the lack of diversity in the "Forward into Light" Pageant that was held on his property.

He died a year later. The Oubliette Library includes a note in the W. E. B. Du Bois Collection from Mrs. Milholland to Du Bois thanking him for his sympathy note. Mrs. Milholland wrote, after John E. died, that his main legacy was the huge Meadowmount property; the bonds were largely worthless. She went about selling off pieces of the property to raise money.  Calvin Tomkins of the New Yorker (soon to be 90 years old, and still writing!), who grew up near the Milhollands, told me he purchased a small piece of the property and sold it decades later.

See also: John E. Milholland and the Platt Machine in New York

BIRTH | Sep 20–Upton Sinclair, One of Inez's Passionate Fans

Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)

This day in 1878 was born Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr. in Baltimore, Maryland. He entered City College of New York at 14, paying the tuition himself because his alcoholic father did not earn enough to send him to college, or indeed to support his family.

Sinclair earned money by writing for stories for newspapers and magazines. At 17, he did so well he had his own apartment, and shared his income with his parents.

Sinclair married three times. After his first marriage, to Meta Fuller in 1902, the money he earned was not enough to support his family. A well-off uncle financed his first novel which he self-published when he was 21. But his sense of unfairness at the disparity between his parents' great poverty and his uncle's wealth led him to become a member of the Socialist Party.

A Socialist journal commissioned him to write about immigrants working in the Chicago meatpacking district, and Macmillan gave him an advance for the book. Sinclair moved to the stockyards district, and for seven weeks took notes that led to his book, The Jungle. It was serialized in the journal, but Macmillan wouldn't print it unless Sinclair toned it down. Instead, Sinclair showed it to four other publishers who, alas, echoed Macmillan's sentiments. Sinclair steamed ahead with another self-publishing plan and started taking pre-print orders. His sales were good and Doubleday stepped in to publish the book if someone would verify Sinclair's story. Doubleday's lawyer went to Chicago and verified the unsanitary conditions, and the book was published in 1906, to huge praise.

However, Sinclair had intended to expose maltreatment of meatpacking workers, but readers latched on to the more selfish issue of unsanitary food preparation. President Teddy Roosevelt praised the book and the upshot was the Pure Food and Drugs Act. In the wake of the book's success, Sinclair went on to publish 90 more books.

Upton Sinclair met Inez Milholland at the Intercollegiate Socialist Society in 1910, as described in the book on Sinclair by Lauren Coodley. He fell passionately in love with Inez and remembered their conversation many years later. He was still married to his first wife Meta, but they were having trial separations. Inez said she could not be involved with another married man because one was enough. 

Sinclair and his first wife were divorced in 1911. His letters to Inez Milholland (at the Schlesinger Library, Harvard University ) show that he was looking to Inez for intellectual rapport that he did not have with Meta - or with either of his two subsequent wives.

In 1913, Inez married Eugen Boissevain. Sinclair married his second wife, Mary Craig, and they were together a long time, until 1961. His third and last wife was Mary Elizabeth Hard Willis, with whom he was married from 1961 until 1967. He died the following year.

He also very nearly won the governorship of California after his publication of a time-travel-to-the-future booklet titled "I, Governor of California And How I Ended Poverty". His plan to end poverty met with support and he headed the California Democratic Party's ticket. Despite his known socialist leanings, his candidacy (in the depths of the Depression) was competitive...  but in the end he lost to the Republican candidate in 1934. Not at a loss for words whatever the outcome, he published a follow-up booklet: "I, Candidate for Governor and How I Got Licked."

ASHOKA | Morgan Dixon and National GirlTrek

Trekking for Health - Morgan Dixon 

At the Ashoka Support Network dinner yesterday, I spoke with Morgan Dixon, the newest of the Ashoka Fellows. She has a compelling story, and a plan for a national GirlTrek event on October 16.

I see a lot of similarities between Morgan and her predecessor activist 100 years ago, Inez Milholland:

• Morgan is smart. She says she was the first in her class to graduate from college. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Southern California and then went on to get a Master of Education Policy and Leadership at Seton Hall. 
• Morgan is a street organizer. Inspired by her sister and other members of her family. She says she is also inspired by Ella Baker and Septima Poinsette Clark, both of whom worked on civil rights issues with Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP.
• Morgan is a leader. She founded GirlTrek with her sister in Teaneck, N.J., and previously served as director of leadership development for one of the largest charter school networks in the country, Achievement First. Before Achievement First, Morgan directed the development and start-up of six public schools in NYC for St. Hope and the Urban Assembly, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 
• Morgan is a communicator. She began her career with Teach For America as a high school history teacher in Atlanta, GA, and later as a school administrator in Newark, NJ. Morgan was awarded Teach For America's 2012 Social Innovation Award.  
• She is a popular speaker. She was recognized by the Awesome Foundation as a leader to watch. She recently addressed students at Yale and Princeton and opened the 2012 summit for the National Outdoor Leadership School.

She told me that she started GirlTrek two years ago because she was heartbroken that so many black women die of preventable diseases. She says that four out of five African American women are overweight and half of them are obese. Yet 70 percent of them are the breadwinners in the family. (I haven't checked any of these numbers, but they sound right.)

Morgan is trying to draw attention to the need for a change in diet and need for exercise through walks for black women's health. GirlTrek supports African American women and girls' living healthier lives by walking.

 GirlTrek, based in Washington, D.C. supports more than 15,000 walkers and is operated with the help of 300 volunteers and 145,000 supporters. GirlTrek aims to mobilize one million supporters to lead a "walking revolution for better health" in high-need communities across America. GirlTrek's health movement relies on telling stories, providing active role models, organizing in the street, partnering with other organizations and just making the case to the media.

Morgan will keep them all moving by example and exhortation.

Comment

Morgan exemplifies the front edge of the woman's movement that dates itself back to the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, and got itself renewed energy in the 1913 march sponsored by the National Woman's Party in Washington, which Inez Milholland led on horseback.

I was at the centennial march last year and have already commented that it was composed 95 percent of Deltas,  from all over the country. The Delta Sigma Theta sorority had just been founded at Howard University in 1913 is the activist sorority that Inez championed to be part of the Washington march.

xBOISSEVAIN | Eugen (Superseded)

Eugen Boissevain
Married well, and then again.
First Inéz, for the women's vote,
Then 'twas Edna, the poet we quote.
(Clerihew by JT Marlin.)

This post has been superseded by this one. This post is kept up solely to maintain links.

INEZ | Milholland Chair, Essex County

At the Essex County Historical Society in Lewis, NY, a
group is studying the lives of Inez Milholland and
 other locals to understand their contributions to history.

In Essex County, NY a chair is dedicated to the memory of Inez Milholland at the end of 2013 (I just ran across the video).

Vida ("Tubby") and sis Inez Milholland
 in 1913. Vida carried on with suffrage
work after Inez's death in 1916.

The ceremony consisted of the reading of a speech by Inez Milholland that she gave when she was 25 and was a newly minted lawyer from NYU, where a Professor at the Law School occupies the Inez Milholland Chair. The 9-minute reading of the speech was recorded and may be seen here.

The video is easy to hear and follow, and Inez's words are well put together. But as a visual it has little to offer after one spends a minute looking at the layout of the office and the audience.

It might be better done as a dramatization.  Or with photos of Inez. Or something else. Anything would be better than a talking head.

This reminds me of a Duke who was asked to be the final judge in a competition for the best singer in his duchy. He was finally presented with two winners from the semi-finals and his job was to pick the best of the two. The first one sang for about 20 seconds and the Duke put his hand in the air and stood up.  "STOP...," he said.  "...Give the prize to the other one."

March 25 - Happy Birthday, Gloria Steinem, 80

Happy birthday, Gloria Steinem.

You are what Inez Milholland might have turned out to be if she had lived longer and had been born later.

Inez Milholland was called by the Editorial Board of The New York Times "the fairest of the Amazons" in 1913.

You were similarly called by The Washington Post columnist Maxine Cheshire  “the miniskirted pinup girl of the intelligentsia."

I got the Cheshire quote from Gail Collins's report on Gloria Steinem's 80th birthday. She noted that Steinem is in Botswana to celebrate her 80th.

Steinem's 40th and subsequent-decade birthdays have been well publicized because she wanted to lead other women by example, and not show fear in the face of aging. She has done this.

How much do women need men?

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.

Steinem was born this day in Toledo, Ohio. Her father was an antique dealer and a summer resort operator who traveled around in a trailer, looking for new business ideas. She said of her parents:

[Dad] was always going to make a movie, or cut a record, or start a new hotel, or come up with a new orange drink. [Mom was] an invalid who lay in bed with eyes closed and lips moving in occasional response to voices only she could hear; a woman to whom I brought an endless stream of toast and coffee, bologna sandwiches, and dime pies.

In this environment, Steinem had poor grades, says Garrison Keillor, but she managed to get into Smith based on her entrance exams. After college, she made her name as a journalist with a piece called "I was a Playboy Bunny" (1963), about working "undercover" at the Manhattan Playboy Club. She went on to found Ms. Magazine in 1972. It sold out its first print run of 300,000 copies in eight days. Steinem has written several books about the inequities women face in the modern world, including Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983) and Revolution from Within (1992).

INEZ | Graveyard Meeting, June 1908

Graveyard where Vassar suffragists met. Photo from the Turning Point Suffragist Memorial Newsletter.

When Inez Milholland was a student at Vassar, she requested use of the Vassar chapel for a suffrage meeting.

But President James Monroe Taylor forbade it. So the meeting was held at a public graveyard across the street from Vassar.

Taylor was outraged at the "exploitation" of Vassar for political purposes and said he would expel any student who attended.

But word got out and the meeting on June 8, 1908 attracted about 40 Vassar undergraduates, ten alumnae, Harriot Stanton Blatch (Elizabeth Cady Stanton's daughter) - who was organizing the event as part of a trolley ride down the East Coast - and others from outside the Vassar community including two men.

This meeting established the Vassar Votes for Women Club, which continued to meet off-campus under Milholland's leadership.

Her opening remarks at this meeting were in part: "How can we enjoy a comfortable life when young girls are chained to their machines in factories? Sisterhood with other women is more important to me than a Vassar diploma. . . . Only when women vote, will they breathe free." Source:  Boissevain Family Website.