Fola La Follette

Fola La Follette, born Flora Dodge La Follette on September 10, 1882, in Madison, Wisconsin, was an American actress, teacher, women's suffrage activist, labor activist, and author. The daughter of progressive politician Robert "Fighting Bob" La Follette and lawyer and suffrage leader Belle Case La Follette, she was educated at Wisconsin Academy in Madison before earning a degree from the University of Wisconsin. She married playwright George Middleton in 1911 while keeping her maiden name. La Follette died on February 17, 1970, at the age of 87, of pneumonia, in a hospital in Arlington, Virginia, and was buried at Forest Hill Cemetery in Madison, Wisconsin.

La Follette spent approximately ten years working as a stage actress following her graduation. Her Broadway appearances, which spanned from 1908 to 1911, included Leo Ditrichstein's Bluffs in 1908 and Percy MacKaye's The Scarecrow in 1911. She also appeared in the Broadway production of her husband George Middleton's play Tradition. Beyond her Broadway work, La Follette performed multiple times in the one-woman suffragist play How the Vote Was Won, beginning in 1910. Anna Shaw, then president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, wrote to La Follette praising the 1910 production, describing it as "splendid help" to the suffrage cause. In 1912, La Follette appeared in vaudeville to deliver a suffragist speech that was well received. Her performances were noted for contradicting the caricature of the humorless suffragist, and she became, for many in the movement, a model of how suffragists wished to be publicly represented. She was also among the actors who helped found the performers' union Actors' Equity.

La Follette's activism extended into the labor movement. In 1913, she worked to secure her father's commitment to intercede in the United States Senate on behalf of striking garment workers in New York City. She walked picket lines, testified in court on behalf of workers who had been arrested, gave speeches to striking workers, and raised public attention to the issue of police brutality against strikers. Along with other women of social prominence and college backgrounds, La Follette was part of what was referred to during this period as the "mink brigade," a group whose dress and social standing made police hesitant to arrest them.

La Follette's public roles were not limited to activism and performance. In 1924, when her mother fell ill during Robert M. La Follette Sr.'s presidential campaign, La Follette stepped in to take her mother's place on the campaign trail. From 1926 to 1930, she taught at the City and Country School in New York City. She also served as a contributing editor to La Follette's Weekly Magazine, the family's progressive publication, and contributed writing on women's suffrage to other periodicals. After her mother began a biography of Robert La Follette Sr. but died having completed only roughly one quarter of the manuscript, La Follette spent the next sixteen years completing the project. The resulting two-volume work, Robert M. La Follette, June 14, 1855–June 18, 1925, co-credited to Belle Case La Follette and Fola La Follette, was published by MacMillan in 1953. The chief of the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress described it as "brilliant," and a reviewer for The New York Times called it "a wonderfully rich and detailed personal account." At the time of her death, The New York Times quoted La Follette on the subject of women's suffrage: "A good husband is not a substitute for the ballot."