On this day 70 years ago, Margaret Chase Smith became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate. For more than three decades, she served as a role model for women aspiring to national politics; she was also the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and the first to have her name placed in nomination for the US Presidency of a major party.
Senator Smith bravely denounced the Communist witch hunt of McCarthyism at a time when others feared that speaking out would ruin their careers. On June 1, 1950, she delivered her courageous 15-minute “
Declaration of Conscience" speech, defending every American's "right to criticize...right to hold unpopular beliefs...right to protest.”
READ a bit of her remarkable censure of her own party... (1948)
