Program

National Votes for Women Trail

Subject

Event, People, Site

Location

27 12604, Kenyon, Arlington, NY 12603, USA

Lat/Long

41.689845, -73.891701

Grant Recipient

National Collaborative for Women's History Sites

Inez Milholland (Boissevain) (1886-1916) was a leading suffragist in the fight for women’s right to vote, and an advocate for equal rights for women. In 1908, Milholland was attending Vassar College, then a women’s only school located in Poughkeepsie, New York. That year, Milholland led a group of forty fellow students in defying Vassar President James M. Taylor by holding a meeting in support of women’s suffrage. Speakers at the meeting included suffragists Harriot Stanton Blatch, Rose Schneiderman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Helen Hay. The June 11, 1908 edition of the New York Evening World included an interview with one of the speakers at the event, Rose Schneiderman, in which she stated:

President Taylor had refused us permission to speak at the college commencement, so we decided to conduct the meeting despite him.

Schneiderman continued:

We were sure of success, for the modern college girl is eager to listen to any plans for bettering the conditions of women. And it was a huge success, even though we were forced to conduct the meeting under restrictions, for President Taylor highly disapproves of our movement and had requested the girls not to attend. They came, however, forty strong, and enthusiastically applauded our sentiments, and, if I am not mistaken, we have created an interest in the woman’s suffrage movement in Vassar which opposition will not down.

The June 11, 1908 edition of the Bridgewater, New Jersey Courier-News reported that when the suffragists and students were not allowed to hold their meeting on campus, they left the campus and held the meeting on the adjoining Calvary Cemetery property next door. The Courier-News noted that the meeting lasted more than an hour, with the students sitting on the grass in the cemetery listening to the suffrage speakers.

Milholland went on to become a prominent suffragist in the fight for women’s right to vote, marching at the head of several suffrage parades, including the national suffrage procession held in Washington, D.C. on March 3, 1913. Tragically, Milholland died unexpectedly at 30 years old on November 25, 1916, never having witnessed women achieving the right to vote.

In November 1917, New York voters approved a women’s suffrage amendment to the state constitution securing women’s right to vote in the state, a major achievement for the suffrage movement. The suffrage win in New York State helped to influence public support for women’s suffrage on a national scale, and on June 4, 1919, the United States Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment which reads, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” By August 1920, the necessary 36 states had ratified the amendment, securing women’s right to vote across the United States.