Susanna Madora Salter was the first woman elected as mayor in the US in 1887, after her name was secretly added to the ballot. The women’s suffrage movement began in 1848 and after 70 years, the 19th amendment was passed.
Decades before the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution officially enfranchised American women in 1920, Susanna Madora Salter became the first woman in the United States to be elected mayor of a municipality. But she hadn’t planned on running for office in 1887. Her name was secretly placed on the ballot in Argonia, Kansas by a group of men who hoped to hush up the idea that women could hold office. electives. When her 27-year-old mother found out that her name had been added to the Progressive Party’s list of candidates, she agreed to serve if elected. With the support of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, Salter was elected mayor of Argonia, with a two-thirds majority.
The long road to women’s suffrage:
Salter was the daughter of the city’s first mayor, and her father-in-law, Melville J. Salter, was a former lieutenant governor of Kansas.
In 1848, the women’s rights movement in the United States was launched nationwide with the Seneca Falls Convention in Upstate New York, organized by abolitionists and social reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.
After a 70-year battle, women’s suffrage groups emerged victorious as the 19th amendment was passed.
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