 REMEMBER INEZ 24x36" 1.5" gallery canvas - created in celebration of Women's History Month, 2022 The painting above celebrates Women's History Month, 2022 to honor Inez Millholland and the Suffrage Procession (organized by Alice Paul) that she led on a horse named “Gray Dawn.” She led the parade of approximately 8,000 women down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. on March 3rd, 1913 - the day before President Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated. The procession that day was marred by an angry mob, mainly consisiting of angry men that mobbed the street in front of the parade. Some slapped and spit on the marchers. The women were also taunted by a barrage of sexual remarks, had lit cigarettes and matches thrown at them - with some police officers joining in against the women in the march. One hundred women were transported to the local Emergency Hospital for their injuries. Later, the general consensus was that the parade violence was a national disgrace and the Senate launched an investigation (which resulted in a 745 page report) that gave the suffragists a forum to criticize the patriarchal politics. The testimonies given in the investigation prompted the mass media to champion's women's rights to public space. The right to assemble peaceably in public politics allowed much of the media to be sympathetic to the women's plight. If you’d like to learn more about Inez Millholland (Boissevain) consider reading, “INEZ: The Life and Times of Inez Milholland,” by Linda J. Lumsden. You can find it on Amazon here. A brief synopsis of her life (mainly from the book cited) follows: Inez Milholland was born into a wealthy family on August 6th, 1886 in Brooklyn, New York. Her father John was a reporter and editorial writer for the New York Tribune. He also headed a pneumatic tube business that enabled the family to live a privileged life in New York and in London, England. While in London, Inez met the English Suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst and was impressed. Milholland’s father supported many reforms including the women’s suffrage movement, world peace, and civil rights. Her mother (Jean) exposed the children (she had a sister Vida and a brother named John - aka Jack) to intellectual and cultural stimulation. Inez studied in schools in England and Germany prior to attending Vassar College in New York, where she was a star athlete on the track team. While at Vassar, she was once suspended for organizing a women's suffrage rights meeting. The president of Vassar had forbidden such meetings, and later she assembled meetings for interested women in the cemetary across the road of the college. Inez graduated from Vassar College in 1909. After graduation, she applied for admission to Yale, Harvard, and Cambridge Universities to study law, but was denied due to gender. She ultimately earned a law degree at New York University School of Law and received her degree in 1912. Inez lived a very colorful and out of the ordinary life for a woman during that time period. In her personal life, Inez was the classic New Woman at the beginning of the 20th century. The New Woman pushed the boundaries in a male-dominated society. She was also a New Woman when it came to the sexual revolution and validation of female sexual pleasure and freedom. This was at a time when women’s call for sexual freedom threatened society much more than their call for votes. Most Americans remained prudishly Victorian. The New Woman’s revolutionary claim that women could enjoy sex outside of marriage unleashed fears that uncontrolled sex would render marriage obsolete and shatter the foundation of society. While on a cruise to London, she proposed to and married Dutch businessman, Eugen Jan Boissevain in London in July 1913. Boissevain also believed in the new sexual politics that called for intense communication and equality between the sexes. Like Inez, he believed in free love. Milholland did not stop flirting with other men after marriage and often wrote to Boissevain to tell him. They vowed never to limit each other’s freedom. Inez believed wedding rings were a badge of slavery and the couple chose not to wear them. The dynamic Inez wore many hats. She was Labor Lawyer, a war protestor (WWI), a member of the NAACP, The Women’s Trade Union League, the Equality of Self Supporting Women in New York (Women’s Political Union), the National Child Labor Committee, and England’s Fabian Society (Britain’s oldest political think tank) and more. Inez was also involved in the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which later branched into the grassroots radical National Women’s Party (NWP). She became a leader and popular speaker on the NWP campaign circuit and worked closely with Alice Paul and Lucy Burns. Inez Millholland never had the right to cast a vote, despite fighting for that right and never giving up hope. She died in the hospital only weeks later after collapsing while on tour in the west while delivering a Suffrage address on October 22nd, 1916 in Los Angeles, California. According to the audience, the last words she spoke before collapsing were addressed to President Woodrow Wilson: “Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?” Her death was attributed to pernicious anemia. Despite repeated blood transfusions, she died on November 25th, 1916 in Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. Inez was 30 years old. It wasn’t until 1920, that the Nineteenth Amendment secured the vote for women. While Inez never had the right to vote, she gave her life fighting for it. After Inez died in 1916, her sister Vida devoted her time to suffrage work. Vida went to prison for three days in 1917 for picketing the White House on July 4th, 1917 to pressure President Wilson to support women’s suffrage. While in prison, Vida sang every night to her fellow prisoners.  Vida Milholland (sister of Inez) was imprisoned for 3 days in 1917, arrested while picketing the White House for women's right to vote on July 4th, 1917. You can find the gravesite of Inez in Lewis Cemetary, Lewis, Essex County, New York.  - Shelly Taylor
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