90 years ago today, Hattie Caraway became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate.
From The Good News Network... https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/events070112/
Hattie was elected on January 12, 1932.
>The Democrat from Arkansas was the first female to serve a full term and the first woman to preside over the Senate. After a state precedent saw Caraway elected to serve the remainder of her late husband’s term as Senator, she surprised Arkansas politicians in 1932 by announcing that she would run for a full term, joining a field already crowded with prominent candidates who had assumed she would step aside following her brief and largely-ceremonial appointment. She told reporters, “The time has passed when a woman should be placed in a position and kept there only while someone else is being groomed for the job.”
She was only the second woman to take a Senate seat as a widow, and wrote, upon noticing she had been assigned exactly the Same senate desk as her predecessor that “I guess they wanted as few of them contaminated as possible.”
In 1938, Caraway entered a tough fight for reelection, challenged by Representative John Little McClellan, who argued that a man could more effectively promote the state’s interests using the slogan, “Arkansas Needs Another Man in the Senate!” With backing from government employees, women’s groups, and unions, Caraway won a narrow victory in the primary and took the general election with 89.4 percent of the vote. In doing so, she became not only the first woman to be elected to the Senate, but also the first to be re-elected.
Portrayed as “Silent Hattie” by the press she spent a very limited time in debate, committee, or speaking on the house floor. She explained her reticence as unwillingness “to take a minute away from the men. The poor dears love it so.” Caraway’s Senate committee assignments included Agriculture and Forestry, Commerce, and Enrolled Bills and Library, which she chaired. She sustained a special interest in relief for farmers, flood control, and veterans’ benefits, all of direct concern to her constituents, and cast her votes for nearly every New Deal measure.<
There's not much more text but a few photos and access to some of Hattie's quotes
at the link. It makes for a good day when I learn things like this that I never knew before.
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