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Played by Julia Ormond
INEZ MILHOLLAND (1886-1916)
A native of Brooklyn, New York, Inez Milholland was suspended from Vassar College after organizing a women's suffrage meeting in a cemetery to protest the college's
refusal to allow suffrage speakers on campus. By the time she graduated, Milholland had persuaded more than two-thirds of her fellow students to support suffrage. She went on to get a law degree at New York University after being denied entrance on the basis of her gender by Harvard and Columbia.
On March 3, 1913 -- the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration -- Milholland, draped in flowing white robes and riding on a white horse, led a parade of an estimated 5,000 suffragists carrying a banner that read "Forward
Out of Darkness, Forward Into Light", later the motto of the National Woman's Party. This image became emblematic of the fight for women's rights in America. The marchers were attacked verbally and physically but refused to give up. Milholland became one of the leaders of the suffrage movement, speaking across the country despite doctors' warnings to stop in light of her pernicious anemia. In 1916 she collapsed in the middle of a speech in Los Angeles and died 10 weeks later at age 30. Some 10,000 people attended her memorial service, the first ever held for a woman in the nation's capital. Milholland's last public words were, "Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?"
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