“I cannot vote, but I can be voted for.”
— Belva Lockwood, National Women’s Equal Rights party candidate for president in 1884
Belva Lockwood may have been the fist woman to see her name printed on ballots (in nine states) in a presidential race, but she was not the first woman to run and campaign for the highest office in the land. That distinction goes to Victoria Woodhull, who ran on the Equal Rights Party ticket in 1872, twelve years before Ms. Lockwood. However, the Woodhull campaign was never officially recognized. She was a controversial candidate for many reasons including those captured here:
“She was under the constitutionally mandated age of 35. She did not receive any electoral votes and the popular votes were unrecorded. Women themselves could not legally vote until 1920. Her association with causes considered unseemly (such as free love and Communism) and with the black intellectual Frederick Douglass made her extremely controversial and unpopular. Historians tend to prefer to give the honor of “first” to the more “acceptable” Belva Lockwood.”
— Rhapsody in Book Weblog, March 16, 2009
Both of these women are remarkable figures from our nation’s history. They achieved many notable firsts for women in the law and should be remembered — among other accomplishments — for the following:
Victoria Woodhull, Library of Congress
Victoria Woodhull
Woodhull and her sister were the first female brokers on Wall Street.
Woodhull was the first woman to address a Congressional Committee. On January 11, 1871, Woodhull declared to the House Judiciary Committee that women had already won the right to vote under the recently enacted 14th and 15th amendments a bold statement that cemented her leadership role among suffragists.
Woodhull was the first woman to run for President. She promoted women’s suffrage, regulation of monopolies, nationalization of railroads, an eight-hour workday, direct taxation, abolition of the death penalty and welfare for the poor.
Belva Lockwood, Library of of Congress
Belva Lockwood
Lockwood was the first woman member of the U.S. Supreme Court Bar, admitted in 1879.
Lockwood was the first woman lawyer to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing Kaiser v. Stickney and later United States v. Cherokee Nation.
Lockwood was the first legitimate female candidate for President, earning roughly 4,000 votes.
Read Ms. Lockwood’s essay, My Efforts to Become a Lawyer, here.