Votes for women finds tough audience at Vassar College

In a November 1864 letter, Matthew Vassar expressed the hope that his women's college would cause "it [to] be forgotten that there ever was a debate as to the extent of the powers of the female world in any direction." While the College has indeed made vast contributions to the elevation of women in American society, subsequent administrations have also wavered from this founding principle, perhaps most overtly in their apprehensive and even hostile response to the women's suffrage movement.

While Vassar himself never ardently campaigned on behalf of women's suffrage, he remained true to the purpose behind his college. Having been offended by the text of a voting law that denied women the vote along with "criminals, paupers [and] idiots," Vassar wrote in an April 1868 letter, "[I]f the law was right by this classification I think it is full time that my 300 daughters at ‘Vassar' knew it, and applied the remedy."

Vassar's convictions were not shared by fourth President of the College James Monroe Taylor, who grappled with an increasingly vocal women's suffrage movement during his time in office. Taylor disapproved of Vassar students' involvement in the movement, claiming that the College was a "finishing" school, one intended "not to reform society but to educate women." In a 1909 speech, he asserted that this was not simply his view, but also that of the College as an institution: "[Vassar College] affirms its belief in the home and in the old-fashioned view of marriage and children and the splendid service of society wrought through these quiet and unradical means."

In accordance with his beliefs, Taylor instituted a policy prohibiting the discussion of controversial political issues on campus; however, his efforts to stifle speech were thwarted by Inez Milholland, a member of the Class of 1909 who would later become a notable member of the women's suffrage movement.

In defiance of Taylor's policy, Milholland invited several speakers on women's suffrage to campus on the same day that Vassar alumnae were flocking to campus for a reunion. The meeting was held in the graveyard adjacent to the College, "a place chosen to draw conspicuous attention to the fact that it was not being held on campus," according to the Vassar Encyclopedia. This "graveyard rally" marked the first meeting of the "Vassar Votes for Women Club," which regularly met off-campus.

Milholland's bold actions soon gained notoriety beyond the College's walls. "VASSAR STUDENTS NOW RADICALS," screamed a headline in the May 9, 1909 issue of The New York Times. Beneath it, a sub headline read, "Beautiful Member of Senior Class has Circumvented Even the President of the College in Spreading Her Views." Despite such struggles with students and faculty members who opposed his conservative outlook, Taylor remained in office until he left Vassar in 1914 amidst rumors of his growing frustration with "friction, suffrage and socialism."

Henry Noble MacCracken, Taylor's eventual successor, proved himself to be a far better friend to the suffragists. MacCracken did not agree with his predecessor's vision of the purpose of the College, having stated, "Throughout Taylor's term Vassar was a college for women developed by men." Privately, MacCracken's stance was quite progressive, as indicated in a private memo to his successor, which read: "[I stand] for the advance of women through the suffrage and through every other means by which man may welcome her as friend and comrade in the business of life."

MacCracken eventually lent his full, public support to the cause, having deemed it a "national expedient" and "a war measure of the greatest importance" following the United States' entry into World War I. Nevertheless, MacCracken favored a moderate temperament in the early years of his term, having twice denied Milholland, then an alumna, the chance to speak about the movement on campus. In a November 1916 letter, MacCracken revealed that his denials were due partly to the pressures he faced from the conservative Board of Trustees: "To approve her at this date, so soon after my accession to office would be interpreted by Dr. Taylor's friends as a reflection on him."

However, MacCracken's choice to deny Milholland the opportunity to speak at Vassar seemed to have been as much a personal desire as it was an institutional obligation. "I am forced to confess," his letter continued, "that I think [her] influence has been rather for harm than good to the cause in New York State." Indeed, Milholland's "radicalism" had clearly manifested itself through her involvement in the National Women's Party, through which she stumped on suffrage and against Democratic reelection.

MacCracken's wariness of Milholland may have been compounded by her beauty and charisma, which greatly enhanced her persuasive faculties. For example, Milholland once disrupted a New York campaign parade for President William H. Taft by speaking about suffrage through a megaphone as the procession passed beneath her window. According to the Vassar Encyclopedia, "as she spoke hundreds of men broke ranks to see and hear her." Milholland is probably best known, however, for leading a suffrage parade in Washington, D.C. on the eve of Woodrow Wilson's 1913 inauguration. Perched atop a large, white horse, and bedecked in a crown and a long white cape, an iconic Milholland led a parade of over 8,000 marchers down Pennsylvania Avenue.

While perhaps one of the most well known, Milholland was far from the only Vassar alumna to devote herself to the suffrage movement. Crystal Eastman, a member of the Class of 1903, and Lucy Burns of the Class of 1902 were cofounders of the National Woman's Party, although it was originally called the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage. After six arrests and several detainments, Burns became notorious for the amount of time she served in prison. Elsie Hill, a member of the Class of 1906 and another prominent member of the Woman's Party, was also jailed several times for her suffragist activism.

Milholland's struggle came to an end on Oct. 19, 1916 in Los Angeles, when she collapsed in the middle of a speech about suffrage. Having spent her last ten weeks in the hospital, dying of pernicious anemia, Milholland's last public words were, "Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?" Due to her own tireless efforts, as well as those of her fellow alumnae and countless other activists, women did not have to wait much longer; the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified just four years later.