Kamala Harris Is Running For President In 2024, But Here Are 7 Women Who Ran Before Her, And The Intense Obstacles They Faced
Being a woman in politics has always been a difficult experience. Even nowadays, female candidates running for office face far more scrutiny than their male counterparts. So, when Vice President Kamala Harris announced her presidential campaign in July, I decided to learn all I could about the fierce political women who have come before her.
Only in the past few decades have people taken female Presidential candidates seriously, but women have been running for President since before we had the right to vote. From cruel nicknames to all-out smear campaigns, one could argue that, in the past, the press wasn't very supportive of the idea of a female President.
Here are the stories of seven awe-inspiring women who ran for President and the fierce opposition they faced from the press (and their political counterparts):
1.Victoria Claflin Woodhull (1838-1927)
A prominent suffragist and social justice campaigner, Victoria Woodhull became the first woman to officially run for President, even though she couldn't yet vote. Nominated in 1872 by the short-lived Equal Rights Party, Woodhull announced her candidacy in a letter to the New York Herald, stating, “While others argued the equality of woman with man, I proved it by successfully engaging in business; while others sought to show that there was no valid reason why woman should be treated socially and politically as a being inferior to man, I boldly entered the arena of politics and business and exercised the rights I already possessed.”
She ran on a progressive platform of equal rights for women, birth control, divorce law changes, and free love.
But as with any time a woman does literally anything, a smear campaign began. In February 1872, Thomas Nast, the day's leading political cartoonist, depicted Woodhull as the devil while holding a scroll that said, “Be Saved by Free Love.”
The drawing also featured a haggard woman with two young children and a drunk husband traveling a jagged mountainside with the caption, "Get thee behind me (Mrs.) Satan, I'd rather travel the hardest path of matrimony than follow your footsteps." This particular drawing led to the press's favorite nickname for Woodhull...Mrs. Satan.
Alongside this new nickname, she and her sister, Tennessee Claflin, published a salacious article that made national news for exposing the affair of a famous Protestant minister, Henry Ward Beecher. (Beecher was Uncle Tom's Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe's brother.) The article violated the obscenity laws of the time and effectively ended Woodhull's political career. Shortly after, she was arrested and jailed for several months for distributing so-called "pornography" and could no longer campaign.
Woodhull later moved to England with her sister in an effort to distance herself from the negative press.
2.Belva Ann Lockwood (1830-1917)
A lawyer, politician, and suffragist, Belva Lockwood never took "no" for an answer. After her first husband passed away when she was 22, Lockwood decided to eschew the traditional role of widow and went to college.
In 1873, much to the chagrin of her male classmates, Lockwood graduated from the National University Law School (even though she had to wring her degree away from Ulysses S. Grant's hands) and became a full-fledged lawyer.
Three years later, in 1876, the Supreme Court justices refused to admit her to its bar, claiming "none but men are permitted to practice before [us] as attorneys and counselors." Lockwood successfully (and singlehandedly) lobbied Congress into passing "An Act to relieve certain legal disabilities of women." She became the first woman sworn into the Supreme Court bar on March 3, 1879.
In 1884, Lockwood attracted national news when she announced her presidential candidacy, running for the Equal Rights Party.
She aimed to secure women's suffrage, achieve equal pay, and work towards world peace. Sounds great, doesn't it?
The press didn't think so.
Cartoonists mocked her; men organized "Belva Lockwood" parties and would parade around in Mother Hubbard costumes, and to top it all off, some suffrage leaders opposed her candidacy because they believed it ridiculed the cause.
Ultimately, Lockwood won fewer than 5,000 votes but was not discouraged. She ran for President again in 1888 with a more modest campaign, but it received little attention.
3.Margaret Chase-Smith (1897-1995)
Margaret Chase Smith, the first woman to serve in both houses of the Senate, had an unusual introduction to politics. In 1930, she married Clyde Smith, a man twenty-one years her senior. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1936, and Chase Smith began accompanying her husband to Washington, D.C, to serve as his secretary.
Clyde Smith fell seriously ill in the spring of 1940 and asked his wife to run for his seat in the House in the general election the following September. He died on April 8, 1940, and a special election was held on June 3 to complete his term. With no Democratic challenger, Chase Smith won the special election and became the first woman from Maine to be elected to Congress. Three months after the special election, she was elected to a full two-year term in her own right.
Although a Republican, Smith often broke ranks with her party and supported FDR's New Deal, among other Democratic policies. She was also a fierce advocate of women in the armed forces, becoming known as "Mother of the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service)."
After serving four terms in the House, she began campaigning for a Senate seat, and the press's backlash was intense. One reporter commented, "The little lady…is simply over-reaching herself,”
The press could not hide their prejudices, with some stating that Chase Smith “has stepped out of her class." Even one of her opponent's wives said, “Why [send] a woman to Washington when you can get a man?”
Chase Smith, however, used these criticisms to her advantage, stating, "Women administer the home. They set the rules, enforce them, and mete out justice for violations. Thus, like Congress, they legislate; like the Executive, they administer; like the courts, they interpret the rules. It is an ideal experience for politics.”
When the election was held on September 13, 1948, she crushed her opponent with seventy-one percent of the vote and began a highly successful twenty-four-year career in the Senate.
In 1964, Chase Smith decided to throw her hat into the presidential election ring and ran in several Republican primaries. At the San Francisco RNC, she became the first woman to have her name placed as a nomination for either of the two major parties.
She, however, came in second to Senator Barry Goldwater but continued her political career until she retired from the Senate in 1973.
4.Charlene Mitchell (1930-2022)
Charlene Mitchell, the first Black woman to ever make a presidential bid, was politically active from a young age. When she was 9, her family moved to Chicago, where her father, Charles, worked as a Pullman porter and hod carrier. The Mitchell family settled in Cabrini Homes, an integrated housing development known as a center of left-wing politics.
At 13, Mitchell joined the local youth branch of the Communist Party, the American Youth for Democracy. One of the first protests she helped lead was against a nearby theater that forced Black patrons to sit on the balcony. By the mid-'40s, Mitchell's activism was already in full swing.
She officially joined the main Communist Party in 1946 and quickly rose through the ranks in what was a very dangerous time to openly identify as a Communist. In 1958, Mitchell joined the party's national committee and became its youngest member ever at the age of 28.
In 1968, the Communist Party nominated Mitchell as its presidential candidate. At a convention in Manhattan, she officially accepted the nomination under a banner that read, "Black and White Unite to Fight Racism—Poverty—War!"
She chose Michael Zagarell, the National Youth Director of the party, as her running mate.
Despite running on a third-party ticket, her campaign received much publicity, although most was negative. The press forced the narrative that Mitchell was an underqualified candidate and that she was attempting to, as the Chicago Tribune stated, “dramatize what the Communists perceive to be the nation’s major discontents.”
Ultimately, the Mitchell-Zagarell ticket only appeared on four state ballots and received little over 1,000 votes. However, Mitchell stayed politically active, forming the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and helping many falsely accused individuals get acquitted.
5.Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005)
An educator and politician, Shirley Chisholm is best known for being the first Black woman to run for a major party's presidential nomination.
In 1951, Chisholm graduated from Columbia University with a Master's Degree in early childhood education, and by 1960, she was a consultant to the New York City Division of Day Care. Increasingly aware of gender and racial inequalities, she soon joined the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, the Urban League, and the Democratic Party club in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
In 1964, Chisholm became the second Black person to be a member of the New York State Legislature; by 1968, she had won a seat in Congress.
In Congress, she became known as "Fighting Shirley" and introduced over 50 pieces of legislation, focusing on ending the Vietnam War, racial and gender equality, and helping those with financial hardship.
On January 25, 1972, Chisholm formally announced her presidential bid and sought the nomination for the Democratic Party.
A co-founder of the National Women's Political Caucus, Chisholm's platform supported the Equal Rights Amendment and legalized abortions. A self-described "people's politician", her campaign slogan was "Unbought and Unbossed."
However, her campaign encountered much discrimination, so much so that she was blocked from televised primary debates and had to take legal action to be allowed to make a single speech.
Even though her campaign was underfinanced and under difficult circumstances, many young voters followed the "Chisholm Trail." Chisholm participated in 12 primaries and received 10% of the delegates votes for the Nomination.
Despite her valiant efforts, the 1972 Democratic Nomination went to South Dakota Senator George McGovern.
Chisholm retired from Congress in 1983 and was then appointed Purington Chair at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.
6.Patsy Takemoto Mink (1927-2002)
Patsy Mink was destined for political greatness from an early age. Born in Paia, Hawaii, Mink won her first election as a high school junior, becoming Maui High School's class president. After graduating high school, she attended college in Pennsylvania and Nebraska but transferred due to racial discrimination. She decided to move to Honolulu and attend The University of Hawaii to become a doctor.
Although she applied to several medical schools after graduation, none of her applications were accepted, so instead, she applied to law school at the University of Chicago.
Mink met and married her husband, John, in Chicago. After graduating from law school in 1951, Mink and her growing family returned to Hawaii. She registered to take the bar exam to begin practicing law in the then-territory. Although she passed the exam, Mink couldn't find work due to her interracial marriage, so she instead started her own practice and founded the Oahu Young Democrats in 1954.
Her political career began when she became a private attorney for the House of Representatives. When Hawaii became a state in 1959, Mink instantly began campaigning to become a congresswoman.
Although her congressional attempt was unsuccessful, she returned to politics and won a seat in the Hawaii State Senate in 1962.
In 1964, Mink won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, which made her the first Asian American to serve in Congress. As a congresswoman, she co-authored Title IX (which was renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act after her passing). Mink was staunchly against the Vietnam War, leading other members of Congress to dub her “Patsy Pink.” She continually fought for racial and gender equality, bilingual education, and affordable childcare.
In 1972, the Oregon Democrats asked Mink to run for President with their party's support. With aligning views on the anti-war movement, she agreed and began her presidential campaign.
Although she only received two percent of the vote, Mink stayed active in politics for the rest of her life, even running for Congress the year she passed away.
7.Patricia S. Schroeder (1940-2023)
Born in 1940 to a military family, Patricia Schroeder's political aspirations were no surprise. In interviews, she recalled, "My father was always interested in politics, and he talked about it. The dinner table conversations were always very vivid about what was going on."
As a teenager, Schroeder earned her pilot's license and began her own flying service in an effort to raise funds for college tuition. Her plan worked, and she graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1961 with a degree in philosophy, history, and political science.
In 1964, she earned a JD (Juris Doctor—postgraduate law degree) from Harvard. As one of only fifteen women in a class of 500, Schroeder went on to say that she felt "submerged in sexism." After graduation, she became a field attorney for the National Labor Relations Board for two years before moving on to private practice and, eventually, volunteer counsel for Planned Parenthood.
In 1972, Schroeder ran for a congressional seat in Colorado on an anti-war and women's rights platform. She later recalled, “When I announced for Congress, the newspaper said, ‘Denver housewife runs for Congress.’ They didn’t even put my name in. I kept thinking, ‘Well, yes, I’m a housewife, but I’m also a Harvard lawyer.' So it was really a problem from day one.”
Despite her grassroots campaign and running without the official support of the Democratic party, Schroeder won and became the first woman from Colorado to be elected to Congress. When asked how she intended to be both a mother and Congresswoman, she thoughtfully replied, ''I have a brain and a uterus, and I use both.''
Even though she encountered much opposition from her male counterparts, who dubbed her “little Patsy,” Schroeder became one of the most recognizable faces on Capitol Hill. A fierce representative in all matters, her area of expertise was women's rights and family reform. A vocal advocate for abortion rights and passage of the ERA, Schroeder subsequently became a founding member of the Congressional Women’s Caucus.
In 1988, after spending well over a decade battling Republicans on issues such as reproductive rights and military budgeting, Schroeder decided to seek the Democratic nomination for President.
As a candidate, she promised a “Rendezvous with Reality” and declared she would bring America's underrepresented issues to the forefront.
Schroeder's campaign seemed to be gaining traction, even with expected press opposition. In the 1988 Democratic nominee race, she was dubbed “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, in reference to her being the only female candidate.
However, Schroeder's campaign could not raise enough funds, and she had to drop out of the race before the Democratic primaries. Later, she would say, "I realized that America was not man enough to elect a woman." She continued, “Imagine the frustration I felt when, after giving a speech on the ‘Rendezvous with Reality’ this nation needed, the first question would be, ‘Why are you running as a woman?’ It was heartbreaking to face the many ways in which my gender eclipsed my message and to realize that running a symbolic campaign was the best I could hope for.”
Schroeder remained in Congress until 1997 and was crucial to passing the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993.
Which of these women did you find most inspiring? Do you think the press's treatment of female Presidential candidates has improved? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
