Celebrating a graveyard suffrage rally

The president of Vassar College, James Monroe Taylor, was dead set against it. There would be absolutely no discussion of women's suffrage on campus: no speakers, no meetings, no rallies.

In 1908, he certainly wasn't alone in believing that a woman's education should not include such dangerous and destabilizing ideas as women's rights.

But a number of undergraduate women, led by the outspoken Inez Milholland, were determined to advocate for suffrage. And so the rally was held anyway — not on campus, but in a cemetery across the street.

That historic "graveyard rally" is putting Vassar on the National Votes for Women Trail.

Across the country, some 2,000 sites of significance to the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 have been designated, and today Vassar gets it historic marker and celebrates that moment in women's history.

Inez Milholland had been raised in a progressive family, and she'd already gained a reputation for her embrace of leftist ideas, including socialism. She had spent time in London, learning about the radical strategies of the suffragettes such as Christabel Pankhurst. The Evening Enterprise in Poughkeepsie called her "the leading spirit" of the group.

Across the country, some 2,000 sites of significance to the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 are getting historic markers.

Because the Vassar campus was off limits, Milholland and the fellow members of the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women decided to hold the suffrage event in the small Calvary Cemetery.

According to a June 13 article in Woman's Journal, "the meeting consisted of about forty undergraduates, ten alumnae, two male visitors" — plus a number of guests.

Those guests included some of the day's most most visible advocates for women's rights who came all the way from New York City by train to support the students. They included author and speaker Charlotte Perkins Gilman, lawyer and activist Helen Hoy, labor organizer Rose Schneiderman, and suffrage campaigner Harriot Stanton Blatch.

The famous "graveyard rally" was reported in the New York newspapers, drawing exactly the kind of publicity that Vassar President Taylor wanted to avoid.

The attendees seated themselves in a circle on the grass and listened for more than an hour to suffrage speeches, while Blatch held aloft large yellow banner that said: "Come — let us reason together."

Charlotte Perkins Gilman spoke about the changes that the enfranchisement of women would bring about on society and parenting.

Harriot Stanton Blatch talked about industrial conditions for working women, describing how "greedy men had taken spinning and weaving and soap making and other banches of manufacture out of the home and had consequently forced women to go out in the world to earn a living."

Rose Schneiderman was the last to speak, because she had missed the fast train from the city. She argued that working women needed the ballot to influence labor conditions in factories.

After the speeches, everyone went to the College Inn for lunch.

The famous "graveyard rally," as it came to be known, was reported in the New York newspapers, drawing exactly the kind of publicity that Vassar President Taylor wanted to avoid.

Milholland graduated in 1909, but the ferment she'd stirred up on campus kept growing.

In April 1912, nearly 500 Vassar students signed a petition supporting open discussion of woman suffrage on campus, followed by a mass meeting in the Assembly Hall. The New York Tribune observed that "the question has never before been publicly discussed here, and the eager interest of all the college was shown by the great number that turned out."

By early 1913, it was evident to all that President Taylor had lost the argument, and he resigned. Not long after, Vassar administrators allowed the woman's vote to be freely discussed and debated on campus.

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My name is Dana Rubin, and I help women put their ideas into the world powerfully and persuasively. I’m the founder of The Speaking While Female Speech Bank, and the editor of the forthcoming "Speaking While Female: 50 Extraordinary Speeches by American Women" (Real Clear | Winter 2022).

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