Meet the Woman Who Was the First Female Senator and the Last Senator to Become an Enslaver. He Served Only One Day

Rebecca Latimer FeltonGreat old lady from GeorgiaHe was 87 years old when he took the oath of office on November 21, 1922. First female senator in American historyy.

Voting rights activists in the Senate chamber cheered. The 19th Amendment, which guaranteed women the right to vote, had just gone into effect. approved Two years ago, Georgia was the first state to do so. oppose BT. It has now become the first state to make this appointment. Woman as a senator.

But this victory for women’s rights was a rocky one: Felton was not a particularly progressive champion.

“The day was a historic first for American women,” the journalist said Laura Mallonee wrote for Smithsonian In 2022. “But the situation is complicated by Felton’s record as an outspoken man white supremacist and the last member of Congress enslaved people.”

Felton be born on a rich person plantation in 1835 near Decatur, Georgia, and married the enslaver, planter, surgeon, and Methodist preacher. William Harrell Felton He entered political life in 1853. Manager of his successful campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1874 as an independent Democrat. For decades, she remained in the spotlight of the postwar South as a violent white supremacist who advocated lynchings, expressed racial hatred in her speeches and newspapers, and condemned Black men as dangers to the virtue of white women.

“If a woman must be lynched to protect her most precious possession from ravenous human monsters,” Felton once said. in question“Then I’ll say ‘lynching’ a thousand times a week if necessary.”

Felton’s vision for women’s rights was closely tied to her racist worldview. She reasoned that white men had failed to protect white women from Black men, so white women should take matters into their own hands by taking authority. right to vote.

However, local suffrage efforts were unsuccessful. Georgia refused to ratify the 19th Amendment, but became federal law Already in August 1920, after 36 of 48 states voted in its favor. Even then, Georgia prevented its women from voting in the 1920 elections on a technicality because registration failed before local deadlines. Felton replied to call The state legislature is “the most uncompromising misogynist in the known world.”

But the Governor of Georgia Thomas Hardwick He knew that once registered, women would inevitably become a powerful voting bloc. To win their favor, he appointed Felton to the vacant seat in the Senate. another senator death. Hardwick herself wanted to run for the seat and felt that a woman would not oppose her candidacy.

As it happened, Hardwick lost the election Walter F. Georgeand suffragists rallied for Felton to sit for just one day before George was sworn in.

Although Congress was out of session, President Warren G. Harding relented and called a session. special legislative session on November 21 – not just because of Felton’s calls, but also because he needed to fix some problems maritime transport legislation.

This event, although largely symbolic, was a historical one. in it notesFelton, described in his own words as “a remnant of the Old South whose patriotism never shined,” thanked the “noble men of Georgia” and their “knightly governors” for the opportunity to speak in the Senate.

His first speech was his last, and George immediately took office after this. Another 16 years will pass Gladys Pylea Republican south dakotaShe became the first woman elected to the Senate without being appointed to fill a vacant seat.

Felton never returned to public office and died in 1930 at the age of 94. His groundbreaking victory for the suffrage movement contradictions In American Progressivism, it makes it even more important to see all of its successes, failures, and flaws as part of the country’s complex past. As a historian Crystal Feimster put it Smithsonian“We can’t throw him into the dustbin of history.”