Essay On Women's Suffrage Parade Of 1913

Firstly let us examine the parade in the movie, which is known today as the Women's Suffrage Parade of 1913. In the movie, Inez Milholland is depicted as leading the parade by wearing a crown and and, riding on a white horse. According to the biography “The Life and Times of Inez Milholland,” on Monday, March 3, 1913, clad in a white cape astride a white horse named "Gray Dawn.", lawyer Inez Milholland led the great woman suffrage parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in the nation's capital. Behind her extended a long line of more than five thousand marchers, marching for women's suffrage. However, compared to the image of Milholland from the march illustrated on the cover of the book “The Life and Times of Inez Milholland, the actress in the movie is wearing a black
and gold gown, instead of a white gown. In the movie, the actress playing Milholland is also wearing wings, which is not historically accurate, as evidenced by the side by side comparison of image 1 and image 2. Between the movie and history, although the concept of Millholland riding on a white horse is similar, the actress costume from the movie is historically inaccurate.
Also, in the movie, Alice Paul is seen marching with other women wearing a graduation gown, this is historically accurate. Marchers who received a higher education wore graduation gowns to the parade. According to the transcript of “Conversations with Alice Paul,” Paul earned an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. In the movie, women are grouped by occupation; nurses, farmers, homemakers, doctors and pharmacists, actresses, librarians, college graduates in academic gowns. In reference to image 3 this is historically accurate. In the image, a group of women can be seen wearing graduation gowns, and behind them there are nurses wearing their uniforms. Many marcher were ridiculed, jostled, and assaulted by men in the sidelines. As stated in the official program, the people were urged to “march in a spirit of protest against the present political organization of society, from which women are excluded.” Not only women responded to this call for protest, men were at the protest too. Men can be seen marching with women in image
4. However, the fact that that there was a separate section for male supporters of women's suffrage was not mentioned in the movies. The director’s purpose for including the parade is to illustrate how the women in the parade were assaulted by men in the sidelines; by including men marching in the parade it would take away from the overall depiction that most men were afraid of women earning the right to vote and voice their opinions The march was a significant milestone in the women's suffrage movement because mistreatment of the marchers amplified the cause into a major news story, and brought more women to support the cause. The movie accurately depicted the important parts of the march, however, many details that were depicted inaccurately which ultimately influenced the overall intent of the march.