She Was More Than Just the ‘Most Beautiful Suffragist’
That same year, she led about 8,000 women up Pennsylvania Avenue during the first major suffrage parade. Astride a white horse and garbed in an elegant cape and crown, she was compared by the press to a modern-day Joan of Arc and called the “most beautiful suffragist.” The moniker stuck. “I do think it helped draw crowds to see her,” Ms. Michna-Bales said. “But she was also a very charismatic person and believed so deeply in her cause, that people just listened when she spoke.”
Well aware of her talents, the National Woman’s Party sent her West in the fall of 1916. By that time, most women could vote in 12 states, from Illinois to California, while those in the East were still fighting for the right. For the National Woman’s Party, the only way forward was a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women nationwide the right, but President Woodrow Wilson and his fellow Democrats showed no support. Pinning their hopes on defeating his bid for re-election that fall, suffragists concentrated their efforts out West, enlisting women like Milholland for the task.
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