Hallinan, Hazel H. (Hazel Hunkins)

Hazel Hunkins-Hallinan was born on June 6, 1890, in Aspen, Colorado. She was the daughter of Anna Isabel (Whittingham) and Ensign Lewis Hunkins, a jeweler. According to Hunkins-Hallinan, her mother Anna (1867-1945), the daughter of John and Olive (Gunn) Whittingham, married Ensign (1840-1907), the son of Ensign Sergeant and Sally (Rowell) Hunkins, after he agreed to finance her education. They were married soon after she graduated on October 28, 1885. The family moved from Aspen to Denver before settling in Billings, Mont., in 1903, where Hunkins-Hallinan graduated from high school in 1908. Hunkins-Hallinan attended Mount Ida School in Newton, Mass. for a year of college preparatory classes before attending Vassar College (A.B. 1913). She worked towards her master's degree at the University of Missouri while teaching in the chemistry department before returning to Billings to be near her ailing mother.

Denied the opportunity to teach chemistry and physics because she was a woman, Hunkins-Hallinan was inspired to join the National Woman's Party after hearing Anna Louise Rowe speak. She worked as an organizer in Montana, California, Utah, and New York. Many of Hunkins-Hallinan's suffrage activities were centered in Washington, D.C., where she was a prominent figure in the picket lines in front of the White House. In 1917, she left her paid position with the National Woman's Party to work for the National War Labor Board as a researcher and occasional union investigator. She continued to participate in pickets, which led to her being arrested and sentenced to the Occoquan Workhouse where she and other suffragists participated in a hunger strike.

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