VICTORIA WOODHULL

THE FIRST WOMAN TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT

DATES: 1838-1927 PARTY: Equal Rights Party IN OFFICE: N/A STATE: New York

A stockbroker who was the first to publish a translation of The Communist Manifesto in her weekly paper (the Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly), an advocate of female suffrage and free love who was against abortion, a spiritualist and free thinker who denounced her own views in later life – Victoria Woodhull was a woman of contradictions over the course of her life, but she was also a powerful figure in the American women’s movement.

This was illustrated when she was elected by the Equal Rights Party, an offshoot of the National Woman Suffrage Association, to run for president in the 1872 election against incumbent Republican General Ulysses S Grant and Democrat Horace Greeley. With a radical platform that included support for universal healthcare, equal pay for men and women, prison reform and, of course, female suffrage, Woodhull doubled down on the groundbreaking nature of her candidacy by naming abolitionist Frederick Douglass to the ticket as vice-president nominee. It’s unclear, however, if Douglass ever acknowledged this offer, but it did make him the first African American VP candidate in US history.

At 34, Woodhull technically was a year too young to run for president (the age limit remains 35 to this day), but even so she doesn’t seem to have picked up enough popular support to register any Electoral College votes.