Freedom Fighter

A COURAGEOUS AMERICAN’S CAMPAIGN TO WIN THE VOTE FOR WOMEN INSPIRES A DRAMATIC HOMAGE A CENTURY LATER

A photographer recreates a famed suffragist’s whistle-stop tour

On October 4, 1916,

Inez Milholland Boissevain, a 30-yearold lawyer and suffragist, boarded a train in New York City, bound for Cheyenne, Wyoming. Capital of the first Western state to grant women the right to vote, it would be one stop in a whirlwind, monthlong speaking tour scheduled to take her to roughly 30 cities, including Pocatello, Idaho and Sacramento, California.

Milholland set out at a critical juncture for the movement. Despite a groundswell of support nationwide, President Woodrow Wilson, seeking re-election that November, had delayed full endorsement of women’s right to vote. Milholland and

“I AM PREPARED TO SACRIFICE EVERY SO - CALLED PRIVILEGE I POSSESS IN ORDER TO HAVE A FEW RIGHTS.”

her fellow suffragists were now appealing directly to women in 11 Western states where they had already won the ballot, asking them to cast protest votes against Wilson. “This is the time to demonstrate our sisterhood, our spirit, our blithe courage and our will,” Milholland told the audiences that packed theaters and halls along her route.

“Inez was a spitfire,” says Jeanine Michna-Bales, who recreated the suffragist’s journey for a new book and forthcoming traveling exhibition, Standing Together: Photographs of Inez Milholland’s Final Campaign for Women’s Suffrage. “She believed in equal rights for men and women. She was determined not to fail.”

Dallas-based Michna-Bales combines documentary photography with historical re-enactment to make the past feel more alive. In Milholland, she found the ideal subject for commemorating the centennial of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, giving American women the right to vote. During the course of a year, Michna-Bales retraced Milholland’s crosscountry odyssey. She found that while many of the theaters where Milholland had spoken had long since been torn down, other locations, where MichnaBales was able to set up the tableaux she photographed, were still standing, including historic hotels and small-town train depots. And many of the mountain, prairie and desert landscapes—where the “sunset splashed the mountains and river

“WHEREVER WOMEN ARE SORROWING AND WORKING AND HOPING, THEY ARE PRAYING FOR OUR SUCCESS.”

The valiant Inez Milholland, standard-bearer in the nation’s struggle for female enfran chisement, is portrayed here by Isabella Serrano.

Milholland’s journey (her route embroidered onto a 1916 map by photographer Michna-Bales) began in New York City and covered some 12,000 miles. From Chicago to Los Angeles, she kept a grueling pace, delivering more than 50 speeches in eight states over 28 days, in settings from railroad cars to grand hotels.

Writing to fellow activists, Milholland described the garb she had worn in a 1911 New York City suffragist parade: “The star of hope” symbolized “the free woman of the future.”

In Portland, Oregon, Milholland declared: “You women must assert yourselves, if you are to help reshape the world.”

A re-enactor named Tamara Bridges Rothschild and a gaggle of costumed extras reprise the suffragist’s whistlestop in Cut Bank, Montana.

When she rode into the heart of Great Falls, Montana, from the train station, Milholland was met by a “welcoming committee in twenty automobiles,” one news report said.

The Reno theater where Milholland addressed a crowd has been demolished. The photographer staged the scene at a similar historic venue in Dallas.

Before catching a 3 a.m. connection to Reno, Milholland stopped in Winnemucca, Nevada. “This is the time to fight,” she declared.

In Virginia City, Nevada, Milholland’s arrival attracted about 500 people who were summoned to her rousing speech by fire department alarms, school bells and whistles that usually marked shift changes at the local mine.

Well-wishers commonly greeted Milholland with flowers. A vintagestyled bouquet in Glenns Ferry, Idaho.

Wearied by the pace, Milholland admitted to reporters in Oregon: “I cannot see how I keep going, but I just have to.”