BackStory; You've Come a Long Way?: A History of Women in Politics

this is back story and it reaches a milestone in our nation's march toward a more perfect union the first time in a major party has nominated only one step closer to becoming the first female president of the united states' clinton stands on the shoulders of generations of women who fought for the right to vote but even before they won they're right in nineteen twenty women found ways to influence politics in the spring of eighty sixty three a confederate want a little hungry mob of several hundred demanding free or blog she told these women to come tomorrow were going on the right you'll need a babysitter and calm from dolly madison's park politics to other women who saw the white house by history or women in politics today on backstory major funding for baxter is provided by the shia khan foundation the

national endowment for the humanities the joseph and rubber cornell memorial foundation and the author of mining davis foundation says braun the virginia foundation for him as its bases back stories this korean american history guys back welcome to the show i'm brian balogh i'm here with editors graham and peter honest with us mr bryan wien a saturday in nineteen twenty in the scenic town of jackson wyoming known today as jackson hole has very small town about three hundred and fifty people nestled in a mountain valley and so especially gorgeous this is sheri smith she's a historian at southern methodist university and a resident of moose wyoming after jack smith says that in nineteen twenty jackson wasn't so gorgeous the streets were followed lyden and dave town square was full of garbage and this was frankly a mess it had no sewage system no streetlights no official

cemetery and barely any money into town coffers this disrepair prompted the residents to call of the deal with the town's elected officials but the problem was the man who had been in office didn't want to be nervous anymore so they were not interested in running and responding to these demands for doesn't change in that in the town government in such a small town has a part time job and the man in charge made it clear that jackson's problems or distraction from the real jobs things like running ranchers restaurants and hotels that didn't go over well with a group of women at the gathering apparently somebody in the crowd here in the women who are quite outspoken about their concerns are several where we have the win right have the women do this and you know partly it was probably a joke that some of the women there said yeah you know not a bad idea this was a time when few women held elected office anywhere in the country but a group of jackson women ran for

all the council seats and even made the women wear a simple platform to literally clean up the streets it was affective message voters swept his group are women into office by the end of nineteen twenty all of jackson's elected officials were women then they set about appointing women to nearly every public jobs in town including john marshall she was like five foot two titles thing she didn't hear your lover with the pearl handled the news i'm a woman run can quickly spread across the country and it was an irresistible blend of the old wild west and a new type of america that was just emerging from a simple sound in an article that ran in the la times jackson's hole broke into print many times in the early days burt's running fights revolver jewels and throwing states this time the trouble was nearly empty bottle of balance between men and women and the thrilling escape consisted

of the men's deliverance from the horrors of trying to run a small town governments but there was another reason the story made national news in nineteen twenty americans were consumed by the question of whether the nineteenth amendment would be ratified finally granting all women the right to vote that is there was tended to treat jackson's elections amusing or at the very least a novelty to smith these mystery show how uncomfortable many americans were with the idea of women in charge jackson was if only jokingly a cautionary tale but in jackson the election didn't represent a political watershed or a grande endorsement of the suffrage movement it was uneven critically newsworthy for very long take this diary entry from one elected officials genevieve fans left on monday may tenth she wrote why her husband painted the kitchen and

tuesday may eleventh until its election man furious wednesday may twelfth right into the bathroom and the pantry in the end the women of jackson turned out to be remarkably effective administrators they collected back taxes graded roads cleaned up the town square and organized trash collection but smith says that same pragmatism is what prompted the women to walk away from politics once they got the job done the women themselves finally did not see themselves as people who set out to break down barriers they're purpose was to make town improvement the centerpiece of government here they achieved that a couple of years and then they were happy to step back and let men take over again which is exactly what happened in fact the next time a woman was elected mayor of jackson was in two thousand and one what to make of that ad year gap between jackson's first and second female mayors

smith says it shows that in american political history the role of women evolves but often unpredictable and so when you look at any social movement there are periods when there seems to be progress and then there are moments when after victories people kind of pulled back so it's not this arc of constant progression kind of korean backward for him back today on the show we're going to look at twists in terms of women in politics was a raucous parade for suffrage down washington dc is a main avenue in nineteen thirteen also explore why millions of women still couldn't vote after the nineteenth amendment was ratified nineteen twenty and we'll look at how the first african american woman to run for president to pave the way for the next generation the first let's travel back to america's founding long before women could run for office or vote even saw the wives of elite politicians played a crucial role

in politics here's why the files you found the united states strongly believe they have to embody what they called republican for a true that basically meant putting the interests of the republic above self interest so no favors for friends are political supporters know behind the scenes lobbying this was a radical idea in the seventies seventies when a founder so that if they didn't act the part of proper republicans their new form of government would fail historian catherine morris says there was just one problem the founding fathers had no role models they had only been new americans fifteen minutes they'd been british colonies before that and the only ways they could really understand the world were british and the only vocabulary of power they had this aristocracy if they couldn't be seen as doing anything even remotely aristocratic which omar says often meant that they couldn't do their jobs what's happening in washington is that as the official man of the

government's struggle to retain their qr republican virtue the women of their families took over all of those dirty tasks of politicking that were borrowed from the monarchy but women are virtuoso been taught was a virtuous in europe or the us well is there a difference between female virtue in this republican virginia talking about this region as deftly a bad spot public laying and women for their part their virtue was in supporting man's work and i think that's something important to to say about this period that we're talking about women coping political or being politically active they're not working for suffrage they're not working for equal rights they're working for their husband's politics their family's politics hears example the most he did the nautical practice his patronage so remember there's no job application process in the royal court it was really who you knew and who could help you and you can see why the founding fathers at least in theory thought this was just the worst most

representative practice of the old world and one that needed to be taken out root and branch and fortunately as it turns out patronage is something that a budding democracies and baby republics need and a great example of that is john adams who in his quest to be the perfect republican i kept all of his predecessors cabinet and they all turned against them what your dog's so we need patronage in the early republic we need to make those connections to develop a ruling class to connect the capital city to the hinterlands to create political careers and yes the dirty work of patronage felt to women the political allies or where to put that women would be associated with a nurturing role with affection with forbes could they play the family card limit which seemed like the natural thing for a good woman to do yeah so let's character as patronage not as sturdy but necessary for nation building as it turned out to be and the

women of the early republic he developed a language vernacular of femininity in which to basically influenced petal and if you're not careful reader of the sources you might find correspondence between two women and they seem to be talking about health love family illness all those personal things but with a good read you realize that summit is asking for a job and someone is getting a job using this language and femininity so you broke the code i am the alan turing of women's history yes and nobody embodies that more than my favorite first lady and i hope you are as peter darling i would give us an example of others actually works or how badly the skin cell is always a great example of the patronage machine how it worked she had close friend from her philadelphia days

named anthony morris and she was not close to him to close to his daughter phoebe and it's played anthony morris who stepped out and built in pennsylvania wants a government position so he writes president allison who he knows the delhi a rather formal letter talking about wanting to take a position but then he writes dialing and he talks to dolly about needing a change of see why because his children need to get out a bold and hobbes about concerns for their health and also that they're not needing the right kind of people that they might marry any she's a mother and an old friend and surely she understands that and this is a great letter peter because it shows that like many other men and ed morse has learned the language and directly reply and she too talks about darling phoebe and her desire to get cd out into the world and then a few months later we find out that anthony morris has been appointed as special and to see to spain and so he suddenly with phoebe on about going to stay

so is bringing those two worlds together the domestic and the political that it's really critical to the functioning of this politics it's politics of the heart it's important to note though delhi was without question a powerful political force in washington but she would've been horrified to be accused of being what they call petticoat politicians it's a funny thing about the work of political women of this time it only exists undercover guest allie why anthony morris got this job she would say well he was very qualified but did he write you oh yes but we're just friends i'm just concerned about his health so the politicking of women operated in a kind of culture of denial and the women themselves denied it even as they were quite obvious about what they were doing you have to understand that the power of women's world lies in its and considered nature

of kathryn hughes we reconstruct the women's political activity and conference when nyu women's history is full of paradox and it shows is that american history is not progressive so the sort of heyday of this kind of parlor politicking especially in washington dc comes to an end in twenty years so around the time of andrew jackson's presidency that here we call it the rise of the common man and it celebrated as a watershed of democracy this is when more and more were white men are given the chance to vote and that seeing in our minds as americans is a very good thing but what that meant was that women would become increasingly excluded from the political process so think about it when the majority of people men and women couldn't vote there are lots of ways to be politically influential and you could boycott you could mark you could petition but as demand and so they were getting the vote all of these

other ways are not nearly as effective so a find the politically powerful woman in the seventy nine east might correlate in the eighteen forties isn't and so pretty soon women figured out that they would also need a vote in order to be politically active americans catherine alturas the director of education at the huntington library in san marino calif she's the author of the parlor politics in which the ladies of washington to help build a city and a government earlier we heard from jerry smith historian at southern methodist university neither one so guys have on all corps parlor politicians were only women who had access to a lead man i wasn't an opportunity opened the most women and particularly when the doors close of

those parlors where they go and what women do it affect politics yep it but nobody had a parlor maid and there were those women who didn't as well some of those who did decided to participate in politics and raising go through their husbands at all they started organizing reform organizations joining abolitionists societies and so forth so thats what amazes me is how quickly we picked a deep on this deferential kind of harper called rattle the captain talks about to their mortgages perform on a pretty narrow so so what politics and tails these are women who associate together to take the high ground and make changes sumo world slavery yet are building a lot of times on the missionary impulse is in their churches which can validate swimmer and efforts to make the world better and that pattern continues throughout the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century and early twentieth century its women providing social services because the state isn't supposed to do that and by the

nineteen sixties it's remained being the foot soldiers in large social movements like the civil rights movement where especially in the south we have jim crow segregation the state isn't going to intervene but these women do and they do it in the tens of thousands would you say that organizing women are anticipating future legislation is as deep politics you might say to set a new agenda more propitious agenda absolutely i think they're saying politics for formal political system that doesn't begin to deal with all of the issues that are really about power so women are excluded from politics early on before women's suffrage is finally recognized but they're also drawing attention to the things that they're excluded from politics they're also anticipating equal protection of the laws actually being carried out across the nation an assassin because

women are advancing division of what a state could be and what we might do for each other in this way they run into opposition it every step of the way of the store and opposition suggests that you need direct political power you to be in politics so these things come together the vision and the practice making in politics so brian couldn't talk about women in politics one thing that everybody would know is that women during the civil war era during wartime simply didn't have political power and especially in the south where there were even the stirrings of a woman's suffrage movement but in the spring of eighty sixty three white women across the confederacy did something truly unexpected they rocketed now we should make it clear that these women

were protesting war or slavery they simply did not have enough to eat here's what happened but the second winner the civil war white women throughout the confederacy could not feed their families because most able bodied white males were in the confederate army does not even teenage son has left on these farms this is historian section of courage she says that at first the soldiers' wives wrote letters to state and local officials begging for help kerr discovered hundreds of these letters and here's one written by a north carolina woman in eighteen sixty three we have seen the time when we could call our little children and her husbands to our tables and have a plenty and now we have become beggars and starters and no way to help ourselves and then she said that she and the other soldiers' wives could not do in the field work to get subsistence from land sometimes in the same letter would start out like a big letter and then it would turn angry in the middle we will have read or blood they met in march

of people making sixty three mobs wife women broke into stores and warehouses across the confederacy to steal food there were more than a dozen diesel prices down in salisbury north carolina at the petersburg virginia this riot took place in the capital letters in richmond virginia april second eating sixty three around nine o'clock in the morning in the government's office john johnson bought this amazing diary describes being pulled it was window by the sound of these women about three hundred women with another crowd of men and boys behind the music totally about a thousand people they converged on merchants and they demand emergency say how much as they can of town and the guy says you know well it's a dollar twenty pound and they say how can women and our position pay a dollar twenty pound for vacant you need to give it to us a government prices and he says no and then they break down the door and they begin

this basically for our riot in there where us district of the wharf district of richmond and they threw them off of what it was in the street and come into the wagons off the luge based toilet seat a huge most i think i know the rich as the capital of the confederacy you would have thought that would have had some soldiers there something what would they look this rage for four hours what an attractive than that this in the bird that they did eventually put this thing down by force they called out troops to put down as riots and then a lot of them were arrested their officials were puzzled by how well organized these riots same the lead in which the newspaper offered the standard explanation man dated or even yankee conspirators had put these women up to it but in richmond the trial records provide some clues to the contrary when they get into court they find out that this is not the work of men or yankee operatives it's a workable a one woman mary jackson a house you're in need at the city market and the night before the

riots she called a meeting of three hundred town and country women some of them from as far as eleven miles away people she had recruited and they had a meeting in the belvedere baptist church she got up into the pulpit so you know how acceptable now was and she can well it shoots and she taught these women that they were going to organize themselves didn't wanna behave peaceably didn't want to explain their reasons but that they were going to come tomorrow and they wouldn't keep their children at home that is to say whenever right to litigate the center and come apart more than seventy richmond rioters were put on trial many were fined or sent to prison although mary jackson the ringleader was not despite the clampdown richmond the riots had a positive outcome for women they forced officials throughout the confederacy to pay attention to the needs of civilians not just soldiers presumably they started to return food from the army to the worst hit counties so they gave back through that they had seized by the tax unkind they created food relief

programs that the welfare policy in the confederacy expanded enormously end they allow county relief officials to buy corn at government prices which is what the women had wanted in the first place so i think if people were imagining places in nine states where women were likely to be de politicized it might've been in the confederacy you know southern lady heard analysts are stuck and yet we have here one of the most visible and in some ways effective rebellions of women and not the central america coming out of the south you think itch mainly a condition that they were put in such conditions that they had no choice it did this have a southern accent manila absolutely and this is desperation but you know people can just lie down and die in moments of desperation and these women go up and fought back and they fought back and see sort of forced officials to answer to them like utah poor man you promise to protect us now you better act so the fact that these women who have no legs to stand on

no mountain which they can think of themselves as citizens of the nation with rights that are being violated no that is within their grasp and yes when the government forces them into this really intimate relationship with them it starts to take their husbands and their songs in their food people is what that suggests is that there's grass roots rebellion had very direct result some of people do think of as politics and the public policy of the state so that i mean it's hard to imagine they could have gotten those results in any other foot rather than that had threatened to burn things down so it's just so fascinating and think and so the new thing in a human sense to recognize that when we go into the archives and dig around we find these unexpected things and one of them is that no matter how many times were told and the history we read is really men do this and men do that i mean really it's quite outrageous she get the twenty first century we could still

basically write a history of the world without any women in it it infuriates me there's lots of evidence of how women made history and i think this is a great example of that it's like a raid in history and that's i think wine historians write so much about wars because wars create conditions of rapid change they also leave records second the curry is a historian at clubby university and author of the fed looked like an hour of politics in the civil war has bass bass bass bass bass we're going to turn now to a more conventional political struggle the right to vote in eighteen forty eight the historic women's rights convention at seneca falls included suffrage in its declaration of rights but progress on that front was slow by the early twentieth century only a handful of

states that actually granted women's suffrage a federal constitutional amendment grading all women the vote seemed out of reach in nineteen twelve a splinter group of the national american women's suffrage association or nasar decided to push for suffrage on a national level instead of state by state the leader of that group was alice paul a suffragist trained in so called militant tactics such as hunger strikes in nineteen thirteen paul organized a parade that might not seem like an extreme measure now but it was at the time respectable white middle class american women simply did not march in the street but alice paul wanted to shake things up and she wanted to be seen she convinced nasa leaders to allow her to organize a parade on the day before woodrow wilson's inauguration this is our spot biographer jails are nicer

there'd be many many people in washington already for the inaugural festivities so the nation's eyes would be on washington dc at this time paul thought to secure a permit to march down america's quarter of power pennsylvania avenue which connect to the capitol and the white house on march third nineteen thirteen after months of strenuous efforts in the face of opposition five thousand women gathered for the peaceful march but it didn't stay peace ofa long is on ice or provides a snapshot of the day's drama with testimony from suffragists in attendance they were very conscious of providing a spectacle so this creates started off with women on horseback and the woman fine as no holland known as the most beautiful suffragettes washington post march thirty nineteen thirty the arrival of mr milhollin the beautiful society girl of new york their complete support to the claim of the suffragettes that some of the

most beautiful women in the country are active and equal rights cause she led off the parade with the other course women draped in a blue cloth wearing out of canada helmet that was gold on a white charger shades of joan of arc here who was very much a hero for many suffragettes let's start off with horses or nine years now hollande there were seventeen sections of the parade and each section was designed to have different costumes and then floats came to provide color and spectacle during the parade a kaleidoscope a picture of ever shifting color beautiful women posing and classic rogues past in a bewildering array presenting an irresistible appeal to the artistic and completely captivating the hundred thousand spectators who struggled for a view along the entire route washington post march four

the parade started on the grounds of the us capitol and even as they were getting organized it became apparent that the police protection was already breaking now about short wire ropes have been stretched up and down the length of pennsylvania avenue to the enormous crowd that gathered early to obtain warrants of bandage overstepped them called the meeting with the result that when the rate started to taste at almost every hundred yards of solid wall of humanity washington and they want a few blocks and then it became clear that it was going to be very difficult to go on for three because the police were not successfully holding back thousands and thousands of spectators are many of whom were there for the inaugural festivities for the week i said to a policeman a tremendous big man who could have moved almost any kind of crowd officer and there

are nearly two thousand women in back of us walking five a breast and you can push these lines back he deliberately folded his arms and said i cannot do nothing with this crowd and i ain't gonna try and began to pick his teeth the crowd laughed when he made this reply to me and i looked straight ahead i thought the only thing to do was to march on and women began to hear insults are some of the male spectators began to touch them to push against them to shout at them tell them to go back home what were they doing there this woman put her hand out and and brushed back this drunken germany and then as she did and he had some tobacco juice in his mouth and he says about it right on her forehead and that ran down her face i asked the policeman would you not please protect this woman and he said there'd be nothing like this happen if you would stay at home some women were just frightened out of their minds other women marching were

energized really feeling that they had a right to march down pennsylvania avenue protesting for their rights demanding their rights there's a great quote from one woman who told the other women to get out their hat pins i and to use those as weapons against anyone who approached them too closely another man broke into the parade and almost more girls clothes on her back you make a very ugly remarks to a woman in front of me you prepared to say something to me but as he opened his mouth i can accidentally struck him in the mouth she went down because he felt a great deal i haven't yet heard what he was going to say that that was the moment when that the women leading prayer realized that everything really is falling apart in front and then how he was called in to line the troops the crowd is evidently realizing they would be written down the moms fought their way back when they hesitated the

cameramen drew bill forces into the throngs of world and wield until reading men and women were forced to retreat los angeles times in the short stretch of pennsylvania avenue between eleventh and fifteen streets more than thirty women and girls were taken out of the press to the emergency hospital and a fainting condition in less than an hour chicago daily tribune some of the people who participated in the prey who happened to be congressman began to call for a congressional investigation are hearing was held in which spectators and some of the women marching in the parade could tell their stories ironically this became an enormous opportunity to put suffrage woman suffered on the front page for days and days and days nearly four months because of the hearing so what might've been a disaster turned into a great opportunity it put woman suffrage back on the map there had been

really not a whole lot happening before nineteen ten with a national splash of the nineteen thirteen parade that really reinvigorated the suffrage movement from almost nothing happening for federal amendment a federal matter amendment to the constitution was achieved in nineteen twenties and it thirteen in the introduction of alice paul into the movement within it thirty parade is really the beginning of the ad shows on officers the author of alice paul claiming power it's better to pay off but it's because of turnout a question

from one of our listeners it was prompted by mimi saw online neil welcome to the show hi thanks for having me on a vital sold about this mean so i received a name across my facebook page and it begins with a c and then tweet the states that ninety six year years after women won the right to vote or woman could win the white house and the tweet is imbedded in another tweet that state's native american women couldn't vote until nineteen twenty four asian women couldn't vote until nineteen fifty two and black women couldn't vote until nineteen sixty four and i was wondering what is the truth of that so we have a scene and tweak that refers to the nineteenth amendment the minute the grand women the right to vote in nineteen twenty there another tweet rebates the cnn tweet listen in later years a different minority women got the vote native american women in nineteen twenty four asian american women in nineteen thirty two and african american women in nineteen sixty four will kneel

i have somewhat on the line here who can help us untangle all of this limited issue to rather not see a historian from the university of maryland robin welcome to the show thank you so much delighted to be here so let's start with the first part of this mean the scene and tweet quote now to six years after women won the right to vote a woman could win the white house now if we were going to tweet back and answer to this would be the short version i know where the rebel unpacked each clause and it's been backstory and fully understand things what would be the quick answer to that mean and i love this mean not because it gets everything right but because it does point to a profound truth about the history of women's suffrage which is that even after the passage of the nineteenth amendment on the millions of american women still were barred from the poll as sidney oh you're right to be confused by thousands of the larger scale

than we would have thought so now we're going to ask roben to unpack each one of these clauses and help us understand why what's going on hard to the maine native american women couldn't vote until nineteen twenty four is that true in part in nineteen twenty four congress passed the snyder act and that act made all of native americans citizens by being citizens and i guarantee you voting rights still the states had it in their power to exclude people from the polls on a lot of different bases so what was very common in places like oh gosh utah new mexico arizona named minnesota in many states if americans are still barred from the polls both men and women by arguments that said for instance that because they live on reservations they weren't really residents of the state and those laws remain on the books in some states into the forties and even into the nineteen fifties but so it was dug

decades after nineteen twenty four that many native americans were still fighting for the right to vote in their states so neil what i hear here is that this clause of the mean has even greater weight than we thought oh absolutely and this is the stuff my history teacher never told me but i believe that they're still other parts of this means tough explain i knew yes the second part of the mean was that asian women couldn't vote until nineteen fifty two so it's a problem is this true and it's partly true asian descent and women who are born in the us could vote by asian immigrant women we're largely excluded from the polls because they were excluded from citizenship until nineteen fifty two when the mccarran walter act dropped the bar so that asian immigrants could naturalized to become citizens and there's by gaining access to the polls so it is true but it also applies to men of the same immigrant backgrounds well absolutely

so what do that on a largely true ranking many others there's even more after this right what was the next in the last part of the name so last part of the main stage that black women couldn't vote until nineteen sixty four is a true no not quite an african american women in the north and the west were able to vote in their state at the same time that the majority of women the states were admitted to the franchise so in nineteen eleven when women in california are given the vote but women voted in california women in the south who were excluded in the early twentieth century and through much of the twentieth century by the same means that african american men were submitted by those included things like the poll tax and fairly administered literacy tests renewed violence and economic reprisals from employers and that kept women in the south from the polls in large part

until a nineteen sixty four and sixty five in nineteen sixty four at the revocation of an amendment to the constitution that banned the poll tax and then in nineteen sixty five of course the passage of the voting rights act which made literacy tests and illegal and also so that all kinds of protections to language minority groups which helped asian immigrants are women and men as well so that's very helpful in if you're giving this to me human grade what would you sign to run a free spirit and eight class of the theft if i'm every it would have to be a c plus or b minus you liked the spirit of it is very possible that the spirit behind is it you like so much about this and i think it is really important to recognize that women are discriminated against and many bases other than sex and a few we'll eat here about the well being and empowerment and freedom of women but we have to be worried about all the bases on which women are excluded from something like the vote you know i think that sounds like a mean in and of itself thanks so much to both of

you kneel for michigan's conversation broadened for actually entering these very hard questions will rule robert lacey is a historian and university maryland college park and the author of relentless reformer josephine roche and progressive isn't the twenty sixteen american if you've got a question for us don't be a stranger there's more talk about the nineteen sixty four all action these days that's when conservative senator barry goldwater of arizona is shocked the nation by winning the gop nomination for president now you've compared goldwater's quick ascent to donald trump's nineteen sixty fours it turns out was also the year a republican woman ran for president margaret chase smith a senator from maine made it all the way to the party's convention the podcast radio diaries

recently ran this piece about a campaign the farthest any woman had gotten in major party politics after that point their arrows the contention that no woman should ever dare to aspire to the white house that this is a man's world and that it should be kept that way my name is jenny and sherman and i wrote the book no place for a woman a life of senator margaret chase smith my name is merton henry and in nineteen sixty four i worked on the margaret chase smith presidential campaign marty smith was born and the little town in central maine called skowhegan her mother struggled working in a shoe factory working as a waitress and so forth so was an easy life and i think that was a basis for a lot of margaret's ambition she didn't want to write another hit she had better ideas for herself she was the first woman ever elected to the senate in her own

right she was very much a middle of the road republican who really followed her own instincts on things she definitely was seen by nineteen sixty four as a hawk and a fight with a comedy she was probably the only woman in nineteen sixty four that have the stature to be a serious candidate for president it is contended that i should not run for president because the odds are too heavily against me for even the most remote chance of victory in january nineteen sixty four rj smith was scheduled to make a regular speech to the women's press club reading it is contended that as a woman i would not have the physical stamina and strength iraq so because of these very empowering reasons against my running and decided that i shall

so that was the opening sound like hey i need a mate senator margaret chase smith of may first woman is a lot about whether the new hampshire presidential primary on march on you may she campaigned in illinois she campaigned some in oregon she campaigned in small towns before rotary clubs she drove those places like art scene would not accept campaign contributions so she had no money no poll workers no buttons no bumper stickers goldwater and rockefeller her opponents are millionaires so i think she decided to take the moral high ground and saying you don't have to be a millionaire from washington dc senator margaret chase smith

republican of maine will she tried to get people to pay attention to her record what she had done of substance not the fact that she was a woman but of course she was constantly asked that as the very first thing that people see senator smith not all countries have the same attitudes towards women as the united states have you think a woman president united states would make out in international conferences most so called nose to nose meetings well i would remind you that want those happen the great ballad or a minute for queen victoria i would also call your attention to mr cruise ships references to me through the years when a car made an amazon along the hiding behind a rose you think you would make out in the kitchen confrontation with mr i wouldn't care that estimate that if it was making blueberry muffins i have only in willow world she was always having to walk that tight rope between being

strong enough and tough enough to be commander in chief to run a country but still feminine of unladylike enough because being feminine was absolutely essential and so she tried to balance it the best way she knew how close i was very careful about her appearance of everything she would tell time magazine and the years her mind like vacuuming i oppose with the mid single or treating in a mirror that was a favorite campaigns thank you the response from the press was not pretty one of the pundits said that a woman could be president just as life she didn't act like one day the press never treated her as if she had a realistic shot at

home post is the republican national convention of the problems in san francisco before they adopt the nominee of the republican party will have been determined she knew at that point that she was not in the nomination to say the least a lot of the nomination pretty much so this you're the loser in you don't have enough delegates to swing it well then you very graciously release your delegates to vote for other candidates but senator smith never released them and the total of the twenty seven votes that she got on the floor she hung on to denying barry goldwater the unanimous vote for the

nomination so she came in second the tumult and the shouting has died senator margaret chase smith the lady from maine has emerged from her president breaking bid for the presidency with even greater stature in reputation here's the prizes back why do it at all people run because they won approval point they run because they want to make a statement they run because they've got an oversized ego or something they're all sorts of reasons that people run for president even though they may know they have little chance of winning her reason was to prove that a woman could be a serious presidential candidate and she did she prove it go on now will we see a woman elected president of the united states during our lifetime the world is changing rapidly politics change

possible from a long tradition psalm who is owed that piece was produced by joe richmond and some are free market it came to us from the podcast radio diaries as part of the contenders series profiles of the most original presidential candidates who never won the white house to hear more of these profiles and a radio diaries dot org margaret chase smith wouldn't be the last woman to seek a major party nomination for president and no we're not talking about hillary clinton i'm standing for you today as a candidate for the democratic nomination for the presidency of the united states this year which is announcing the campaign in january

of nineteen seventy two she was the first black woman to run for a major party nomination campaign slogan was and bought and unbossed chisholm was already a seasoned politician in nineteen sixty eight she became the first black woman elected to the us congress before that she served in the new york state assembly she understood that her campaign for president was a long shot here she is speaking to students at ucla in may of nineteen seventy two and in the very beginning i think frankly few i laughed because i was cognizant of the fact that things simultaneously a black person and a woman placed me in the position of being a part of the settlements in america i've never had any male roles to play in terms of the decision making process seized and policies that govern our lives chisholm scam painting counted a number of roadblocks treated as a fringe candidate she had to sue to be included in the

televised national debates she also survived multiple assassination attempts on the campaign trail although she didn't win the democratic party nomination chooses campaign is often cited as transformative paving the way for both the rock obama and this year's democratic nominee hillary rodham clinton we spoke with one politician who credits recruiters shirley chisholm us congresswoman barbara lee has represented a district near seven sisko since nineteen ninety eight she first met chisholm while attending mills college in oakland at the time lee was so disillusioned with politics she never even registered to vote and she used that a flock of a political science class that require students to volunteer for the nineteen seventy two presidential election nevertheless as head of the african american student union she invited mrs chisholm to speak on campus well i went there afterwards and i talk about my clients is sad to hear an earned media or maybe helen regan editor a huge hit her finger at me is you really well very adamant that we'd

separate my genes of these years old girl and i mean i would you know a grown woman and she will give all about public affairs and now i'm working with the black panther party of the program and i kind of leave it now on a rented boat know i won't be part of the political for them because i think it worked for me and so he didn't have that we have been written through the voting in if i really believe it when i was working for and talk about that i needed to get about politically very likely voter ok ok lulu i contacted by you know will my dear i don't have a lot of national money i talked a couple of friends and we figured out and we ended up organizing surely given your account for a campaign from my client immelt college identity and clapton went on to miami at the delegates but as a college professor undertake vicarious pride in the fact that there's all triggered by a farsighted college professor so

she got into the campaign it was it like to be a part of that i do a lot of i imagine a year to get it made but an ordinary flour and rate or i organized the office i organize voter registration drive i actually went to huey newton and bobby seale in no talk to them about the importance of the black panther party get involved in political work and ended up our imagination really give them honorary they're at the apartment of viewing and they ignore it surely part of that all private employer with a very enlightening campaign ad with him a wave that difficult because we didn't have to put together coalitions ouch how i learned how to put together a coalition politics we've been led through the first election of lana well for the first african american mayor in oakland native of what happened have i believe that obama never would have been elected president had not been officially given of course the great reverend jesse jackson gave away as you're doing all this in spy work at the

body you that you had a pretty good idea that shirley chisholm would not be the president on states being white felt like given her leveraging what he would label accomplish that we in anyway he laid out the whole chain of things you didn't think would have happened without george isms campaign are you heartened by the general situation of women in politics today people of color in politics or did you see your future back in those days that that has really come to pass now i am heartened i think progress is not enough we need more african american elected to public office more people of color more women have but you know we have to really recognize the marathon institutional for them to change what the regulators and she said you know when you get it in fact you get a thing about the go along to get along it you know

eventually ruled the denver that were made forty they were written forty she was very clear about the re form an incremental of them would not going to really bring justice any quality to people we had to really get and there'd be one of the institutions and the five that are pulling them again all of our public where she famously said i met more discrimination as a woman them from being black you think she'd still say that if you're running back on it read it felt sick you talk about being an african american and the alarm and what that meant now why might be why you didn't find out she added threat member of the primaries yeah he really had a tough time the huge of the pollen count on the blacker so you think that quote kind of pulls things apart they're really a part of the same thing trying to weigh discrimination for being female distillers free blacks canada

satz is actually known as black women you know we have both obituary and either way we have to live from our show that we can only do that and changing thing sue says says you're the calendar change due to you know engage with the progress of african american woman in an acting wild african american women for granted again what your religion of the end and i kind of the role models whether you have the store they're shaking up to do this morning starts with anyone coming to the capital we really get a beautiful portrait of her life in a very prominent place in the united capital we're really is a congresswoman california and a former volunteer on shirley chisholm is nineteen seventy two campaign a person that could do it for you to keep the conversation going on

what's known thought of this show while you're there ask those questions about our upcoming shows we've got one on the history of the american worker and another that examined faith in presidents you'll find it all factory radios that org or send an email that that's going to continue who also on facebook tumblr and twitter and that's true that whatever you do don't be a stranger baxter is produced by andrew parsons part of the party you know ernest tubbs jones i'm gonna miss the low moments were technical director jillian williams researcher we have help from brendan won special thanks this week to reduce early monoliths alliance and joseph stories produced

at virginia foundation for the humanities majors supporter thought about issue of confrontation than at sundown for the men's joseph a lot of porn a memorial foundation and we are providing additional supports lot about cultivating fresh ideas and the arts mr brian balogh is a professor of history at the university of virginia and dorothy cochrane professor at the miller center of public affairs here on earth is professor of history emeritus and senior research fellow cellist and ayres a professor of humanities and president emeritus of the university of richmond's back story was created by either window for the virginia foundation for the humanities like stories distributed by pr x the public radio exchange