General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsOK, who can name the first ever female US presidential candidate?
Woodhull went from rags to riches twice, her first fortune being made on the road as a highly successful magnetic healer[2] before she joined the spiritualist movement in the 1870s.[3] While authorship of many of her articles is disputed (many of her speeches on these topics were collaborations between Woodhull, her backers, and her second husband, Colonel James Blood[4]), her role as a representative of these movements was powerful. Together with her sister, she was the first woman to operate a brokerage firm on Wall Street, and they were among the first women to found a newspaper, Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly, which began publication in 1870.[5]
At her peak of political activity in the early 1870s, Woodhull is best known as the first woman candidate for the United States presidency, which she ran for in 1872 from the Equal Rights Party, supporting women's suffrage and equal rights. Her arrest on obscenity charges a few days before the election for publishing an account of the alleged adulterous affair between the prominent minister Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Tilton added to the sensational coverage of her candidacy. She did not receive any electoral votes, and there is conflicting evidence about popular votes.
Many of the reforms and ideals Woodhull espoused for the working class, against what she saw as the corrupt capitalist elite, were extremely controversial in her time. Generations later many of these reforms have been implemented and are now taken for granted. Some of her ideas and suggested reforms are still debated today.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Woodhull
Sounds like a fascinating woman.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)CentralMass
(15,265 posts)Manifestor_of_Light
(21,046 posts)Ahead of her time, as all visionaries are.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)Belva Lockwood was the first woman to run for President.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)Wounded Bear
(58,598 posts)oberliner
(58,724 posts)I checked the Lockwood entry and it says:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belva_Ann_Lockwood
I believe Lockwood was the first woman who actually ran for president.
If you look at the National Archives, it says:
http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2005/spring/belva-lockwood-1.html
Similarly, this book about her from the NYU press says:
http://nyupress.org/books/9780814758342/
I think it does a disservice to Lockwood's legacy to take away from her the distinction of being the first woman to run for president.
Jeffersons Ghost
(15,235 posts)JEB
(4,748 posts)I do remember this fine candidate.
Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm (November 30, 1924 January 1, 2005) was an American politician, educator, and author.[1] In 1968, she became the first African American woman elected to the United States Congress,[2] and represented New York's 12th Congressional District for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. In 1972, she became the first major-party black candidate for President of the United States, and the first woman ever to run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.[2]
Chisholm's legacy came into renewed prominence during the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, when Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton staged their historic 'firsts' battle where the victor would either be the first major party African-American nominee, or the first woman nominee with observers crediting Chisholm's 1972 campaign as having paved the way for both of them.[3]
In 2015, Chisholm was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Chisholm