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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPhoto: Women members of the Seventy-fifth U.S. Congress; March 4, 1938.
Women members of the Seventy-fifth U.S. Congress; March 4, 1938. (Left to right): Rep. Caroline O'Day (New York), Rep. Edith Nourse Rogers (Massachusetts), Rep. Mary T. Norton (New Jersey), Rep. Nan Honeyman (Oregon), Rep. Virginia E. Jenckes (Indiana), and Senator Hattie W. Caraway (Arkansas).
http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/media-detail.aspx?mediaID=8502
Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway was the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate, the first woman to preside over the Senate, the first to chair a Senate committee, and the first to preside over a Senate hearing. She served from 1931 to 1945 and was a strong supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's economic recovery legislation during the Great Depression.
Hattie Caraway suffered a stroke in January 1950 and died in Falls Church, Virginia, on December 21, 1950
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Photo: Women members of the Seventy-fifth U.S. Congress; March 4, 1938. (Original Post)
Donkees
Dec 2018
OP
She filled a vacancy caused by the death of her husband, then easily won a special election ...
Donkees
Dec 2018
#4
Norton's crowning legislative achievement came with the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act
Donkees
Dec 2018
#8
Great post! It was likely very difficult for these women. Pioneers all. K & R nt
Persondem
Dec 2018
#10
Nictuku
(3,621 posts)1. Fascinating! Thank you for posting.
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,547 posts)2. and we still don't have proportional representation by women
Slightly more than half of the House and the Senate should be women.
treestar
(82,383 posts)3. That's amazing.
To get elected in 1938! They must have been very good!
Donkees
(31,524 posts)4. She filled a vacancy caused by the death of her husband, then easily won a special election ...
Appointed to the Senate in 1931, Hattie Caraway (D-AR) filled a vacancy caused by the death of her husband, Thaddeus Caraway. The second woman to serve in the Senate, Caraway became the first woman elected to the Senate in January of 1932, easily winning a special election to fill out the remainder of her husband's term. Most considered her a longshot for the general election of 1932, however, so "Silent Hattie" enlisted the help of controversial senator Huey P. Long of Louisiana to bolster her campaign. The highly publicized "Hattie and Huey" tour through Arkansas resulted in a landslide victory for Caraway. Reelected in 1938, she served until 1945. Hattie Caraway broke many gender barriers in the Senate, including becoming the first woman to chair a Senate committee in 1933 and the first woman to preside officially over the Senate in 1943.
https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/Featured_Bio_Caraway.htm
https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/Featured_Bio_Caraway.htm
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Rhiannon12866
(206,712 posts)5. K&R! Wow! That is one amazing photo!
Interesting to see what states they're from (mine's represented ). Thanks so much for posting!
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)6. K&R
Progressive Jones
(6,011 posts)7. Fantastic history! nt
Donkees
(31,524 posts)8. Norton's crowning legislative achievement came with the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act
For a quarter century in the House, colleagues knew Mary T. Norton as Battling Mary, a reformer who fought for the labor and the workingclass interests of her urban New Jersey district.
Nortons crowning legislative achievement came with the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which she personally shepherded through committee and onto the House Floor for a vote. The only significant New Deal reform to pass in President Franklin Roosevelts second term, the act provided for a 40hour work week, outlawed child labor, and set a minimum wage of 25 cents per hour. To get the controversial bill out of the Rules Committee, which determined what legislation was to be debated on the floor and which was controlled by antiNew Deal conservative Democrats, Norton resorted to a littleused parliamentary procedure known as the discharge petition.
She got 218 of her colleagues (half the total House membership, plus one) to sign the petition to bring the bill to a vote. The measure failed to pass, but Norton again circulated a discharge petition and managed to get a revised measure to the floor, which passed. Im prouder of getting that bill through the House than anything else Ive done in my life, Norton recalled.10 In 1940, she teamed up with Majority Leader John McCormack of Massachusetts to fight off revisions to the act and scolded her colleagues for trying to reduce the benefits to workingclass Americans, among which was a $12.60 weekly minimum wage. Norton declared, it is a pittance for any family to live on I think that when Members get their monthly checks for $833 they cannot look at the check and face their conscience if they refuse to vote for American workers who are getting only $12.60 a week.
https://history.house.gov/People/Listing/N/NORTON,-Mary-Teresa-(N000153)/
She got 218 of her colleagues (half the total House membership, plus one) to sign the petition to bring the bill to a vote. The measure failed to pass, but Norton again circulated a discharge petition and managed to get a revised measure to the floor, which passed. Im prouder of getting that bill through the House than anything else Ive done in my life, Norton recalled.10 In 1940, she teamed up with Majority Leader John McCormack of Massachusetts to fight off revisions to the act and scolded her colleagues for trying to reduce the benefits to workingclass Americans, among which was a $12.60 weekly minimum wage. Norton declared, it is a pittance for any family to live on I think that when Members get their monthly checks for $833 they cannot look at the check and face their conscience if they refuse to vote for American workers who are getting only $12.60 a week.
https://history.house.gov/People/Listing/N/NORTON,-Mary-Teresa-(N000153)/
JudyM
(29,294 posts)9. K&R. Interesting post!
Persondem
(1,936 posts)10. Great post! It was likely very difficult for these women. Pioneers all. K & R nt
backtoblue
(11,348 posts)11. K&R