Inez Milholland - Education

Education

Inez Milholland received her early education at the Comstock School in New York and Kensington High School in London. After finishing school, she decided to attend Vassar but when the college wouldn't accept her graduation certificate she attended Willard School for Girls in Berlin. She obtained a B.A. degree at Vassar in 1909 after four years of education.

During her attendance at Vassar College she was once suspended for organizing a women's rights meeting. The president of Vassar had forbidden suffrage meetings, but Milholland and others held regular "classes" on the issue, along with large protests and petitions. As a student she was known as an active radical. She started the suffrage movement at Vassar, enrolled two-thirds of the students, and taught them the principles of socialism. With the radical group she had gathered about her, she attended socialist meetings in Poughkeepsie which were under the ban of the faculty. An athletic young woman, she was the captain of the hockey team and a member of the 1909 track team; she also set a record in the basketball throw. Milholland was also involved in student productions, the Current Topics Club, the German Club, and the debating team.

After graduation she tried for admission at both Oxford and Cambridge with the purpose of studying law, but was denied due to gender. She also failed to gain admission to the Harvard Law School, but was finally matriculated at the New York University Law School, from which she took her LL.B. degree in 1912.

She was later admitted to the bar, joining the New York law firm of Osborne, Lamb, and Garvan, handling criminal and divorce cases. In one of her first assignments, she had to investigate conditions at Sing Sing prison. At the time female contact with male prisoners was not looked upon well, but she insisted on talking personally with the prisoners to uncover the horrible conditions.