Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Forword* (for Forward* or Foreword*)

After getting such good results with our typo last time, we're going to go forward today with a related one. Let's just say that the hits are quite numerous and our subject quite luminous (that is, "shedding light; bright or shining, especially in the dark"). Inez Milholland, born August 6, 1886, was the "most brilliant, beautiful, iconic feminist you never heard of," according to a recent segment on NPR about a new documentary called Forward Into Light. The title is taken from a protest sign she carried in her first suffrage parade on May 7, 1911: Forward out of error — Leave behind the night — Forward through the darkness — Forward into light! These stirring words were to become the official slogan for the National Woman's Party. New York University Law School (which she attended at a time when most other colleges were barring female students) has honored her with the "Inez Milholland Professorship of Civil Liberties." Carl Sandburg and Edna St. Vincent Millay both wrote poems in her memory. Inez Milholland (whose last public words were, "Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?") is often thought of as a Joan of Arc-like martyr to the feminist cause; she keeled over from sheer exhaustion and pernicious anemia while exhorting her listeners from a speaker's dais on October 22, 1916, and died a month later in the hospital. The 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote, was finally passed in 1920 and it's sad that this passionate champion of our rights didn't last long enough to see that day. But Inez Milholland's shining spirit and political legacy will live on forever. There were 598 cases of Forword* (for forward* or foreword*) found in OhioLINK, and "too many records found for your search" in WorldCat.

(Inez Boissevain, wearing a white cape, seated on a white horse at the suffrage parade in Washington, D.C., 1913, from Wikimedia Commons.")

Carol Reid


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