STANDING TOGETHER: Photographs of Inez Milholland's Final Campaign for Woman's Suffrage

A Photo Essay by Jeanine Michna-Bales, 2016 - 2020: Project Research and Principal Photography from 2012 - 2020 Since 2016, Michna-Bales has been researching the Suffrage chapter of American history. The project champions a little-known figure who was at the forefront of the suffrage movement in the early 20th century, Inez Milholland Boissevain (1886 – 1916). Organizing and leading marches on horseback while dressed in white, Milholland helped form the Congressional Union for Woman’s Suffrage (also known as The National Woman’s Party). The group mounted a radical campaign for women’s suffrage in the Western states just prior to the 1916 Presidential election in which President Wilson was running for reelection. At that time only 12 states, all in the west, allowed women the full right to vote. Hundreds of women were asked to travel west to appeal to the newly empowered women voters to put aside all other political agendas and unite behind their non-voting sisters back east. Various keynote speakers were chosen to head the campaign including Harriet Stanton Blatch, Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s daughter, and Inez Milholland. Although she would never personally benefit from a National Suffrage Amendment, Inez battled chronic illness, lack of sleep and delivered some 50 speeches in eight states in 28 days. A forthcoming book of the series will be released this fall 2020.