Margaret Chase Smith

Kelly Therese Pollock  0:00  
This is Unsung History, the podcast where we discuss people and events in American history that haven't always received a lot of attention. I'm your host, Kelly Therese Pollock. I'll start each episode with a brief introduction to the topic, and then talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do. Be sure to subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app,so you never miss an episode, and please tell your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, maybe even strangers to listen too. Margaret Madeline Chase was born in Skowhegan, Maine on December 14, 1897, the oldest of six children of George, a barber, and Carrie, who worked lots of different jobs over the years, including as a waitress and a store clerk. Taking inspiration from her mother, Margaret, who had long been a kind of assistant mother, began working outside the house as well, by age 12, working at the Green Brothers Five and Dime Store. She even used her wages to purchase a life insurance policy. By 16, she was working nights and weekends as a telephone operator at the Maine Telephone Company. One evening, a man named Clyde Smith called to ask the time. It was the first of many conversations that Margaret and Clyde would have. After high school, Margaret wanted to attend Sargent College in Boston to become a physical education teacher, but she lacked the funds to enroll. Clyde, who was first selectman of Skowhegan, found her work recording the town inventory in the tax assessor's books, and then as a teacher, although she only lasted 28 weeks in the one room Pitts School outside of town. She returned to Skowhegan and spent the next eight years working for the local newspaper as a reporter, anadvertising rep, and business manager. On May 14, 1930, Margaret, then aged 32, married Clyde Smith, who was 21 years older than her. Smith had previously been married and divorced, and Margaret later referred to their marriage as a business arrangement. Clyde needed a wife if he was going to run for governor, as he had dreamed of doing, and Margaret herself was politically connected, having been president of the Skowhegan Business and Professional Women's Club, recording secretary for the Somerset County Republican Committee and having been elected Maine state Republican committeewoman in 1930. Clyde, who by then was a Maine state senator, campaigned in the 1936 Maine gubernatorial race, with Margaret at his side, keeping the campaign diary, managing expenses and volunteers. Faced with a brutal Republican Party primary fight, though, Clyde withdrew from the gubernatorial race and instead ran for and won a seat in Congress, representing Maine's second district in the United States House of Representatives. Margaret managed his congressional office and insisted on being paid for her work. She told reporters at the time that their marriage was, "a sort of partnership." When Clyde suffered a coronary thrombosis in spring, 1940, he asked Margaret to file to run in his place, in case he was unable to campaign, stating in a press release, "I know of no one else who has the full knowledge of my ideas and plans, or is as well qualified as she is to carry on these ideas and my unfinished work for my district." Margaret promised to step aside if he recovered, but he died on April 8 of that year. In the special election to complete the term in June, Margaret was virtually unchallenged, and was the first woman elected to Congress from Maine. In the regular election that fall, facing challengers in both the primary and in the general, she won decisively. While serving in the House, one of Margaret Chase Smith's interests was national security. In 1943, she was appointed to the House Committee on Naval Affairs and named to a subcommittee to investigate vice on naval ports. During World War II, she took a 25,000 mile tour of military bases in the South Pacific, becoming the first and only civilian woman to sail on a ship during the war. Having faced gender discrimination in the workplace and being one of fewer than a dozen women in Congress, Smith pushed for equal pay in the military, and introduced legislation to give women permanent status in the military after World War II. When Maine's senior senator Wallace White retired, Smith ran for his seat. Although few people thought she stood a chance, Smith was popular in Maine, providing constituent services to all residents of Maine, even those outside her House district, and her advocacy of a strong military was important in a state where the defense industry made up a large portion of the economy. Smith's longtime assistant, Bill Lewis, led the scrappy, shoestring campaign, and Smith won the Republican primary with more votes than her three opponents combined. She won the general that fall in a landslide, becoming the first woman in US history, elected to both houses of Congress. Again, focusing her efforts on military issues, Smith became the first woman to sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee, eventually rising to the position of ranking member. In July of 1950, Smith herself joined the Air Force Reserve, commissioned as a lieutenant colonel. She served for the next eight years. In 1957, at the end of a tour of military bases, Smith rode co pilot in an F-100 Super Sabre jet, becoming the first woman in Congress to break the sound barrier. She reported, "It was wonderful. I enjoyed the barrel rolls and even the G pressure didn't bother me." Perhaps her most famous moment in the Senate came on June 1, 1950, when Smith stood up on the Senate floor and spoke out against Senator Joseph McCarthy's tactics, although she did not name him in the speech, saying, "I don't want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the four horsemen of calumny, fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear." Six other senators initially signed on to the declaration, but facing pressure, five of them recanted. On January 27, 1964, Smith announced at the Women's National Press Club luncheon that she was running for president, saying that she, "would be pioneering the way for a woman of the future to make her more acceptable, to make the way easier for her to be elected President of the United States." Smith had no campaign budget, and she returned the funds sent to her by women excited to see a woman running for president. Although she campaigned very little outside of New Hampshire, spending most of her time in the Senate, where she was proud of her record of nearly 1700 state roll call votes without missing one, she did win 25% of the vote in Illinois, where two organizations campaigned on her behalf. At the Republican National Convention in San Francisco in  July of that year, Smith's name was entered for nomination, the first time in United States history that a woman's name was entered for nomination at a major party convention. In the first round of voting, Smith received 27 votes, coming in fifth in the balloting. Mr. Conservative, Barry Goldwater of Arizona, was nominated by the Republicans, although he lost in a landslide that November to incumbent president Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson. In 1972, after four terms in the Senate, Smith lost to Democrat Bill Hathaway, having become out of step with both her constituents and her political party. After overseeing the construction of a library to hold her papers, Smith died in 1995, at the age of 97. Her ashes were placed in the residential wing of her library in Skowhegan. Joining me now is Dr. Teri Finneman, Associate Professor in the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas, and author of, "Press Portrayals of Women Politicians, 1870s to 2000s: From Lunatic Woodhull to Polarizing Palin."

Margaret Chase Smith  11:46  
Madam Chairman, distinguished guests and friends. I always enjoy being with the members of the National Women's Press Club, even when you give members of Congress an unmerciful going over. I think that I enjoy being with you, not only because of the many good friends that I have among you, but also because I was a newspaper woman myself before becoming a member of the House and the Senate. In fairness to everyone, I concluded that I should make my decision before the end of January, and I've done so. It has not been an easy decision. Either yes or no would be difficult. The argument arguments made to me that I should become a candidate have been gratifying. First, it has been contended that I should run because I have more national experience, office experience than any of the other announced candidates, or the unannounced candidates, with that experience going back to 1940, and predating any of the others. This argument contends that I would be pioneering the way for a woman in the future, to make her more acceptable, to make the way easier for her to be elected President of the United States. Perhaps the point that has impressed me the most on this argument is that women before me pioneered and smoothed the way for me to be the first woman to be elected to both the House and the Senate, and that I should give back in return that which had been given to me.

Kelly Therese Pollock  14:07  
Hi Terry, thanks so much for joining me today.

Dr. Teri Finneman  14:10  
Thanks for having me. I really admire people who have podcasts like this. As the founder of theJournalism History podcast, I know that this is really much needed work.

Kelly Therese Pollock  14:19  
Yeah,yeah. I'm so thrilled to be talking with you about Margaret Chase Smith, who I think probably far fewer people know of than should. So I wanted to start by asking how you first got interested in writing about press portrayals of women in politics and first ladies, and the kind of work that you have done. 

Dr. Teri Finneman  14:40  
Well, I've long had an interest in this. I was very, very close with my grandmother, and she was always fascinated with First Ladies, and so she really sparked my interest in political work. And then I worked as a political reporter myself for a few years, and really, you know, not only working with the politicians and getting to know them, and the structure, but, you know, really talking a lot with some of the women lawmakers and some of the challenges they faced. And so when I was working on my dissertation, it was coming at a time when Hillary Clinton was seen as very viably going to be the next president. And so I wanted to create this kind of historical record of who were some of the women who came before her that made this moment possible, because so much of women's history is invisible, which we're going to talk about more throughout the show, I'm sure. And so I really, really wanted to bring these stories to light. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  15:35  
So I want to start a little bit further back before Margaret Chase Smith, and just talk briefly about Victoria Woodhull, because I think she's such a unique case in so many ways. But I know you open your book with her as well, and so I you know this is a woman who ran for president before women could even vote, before she was even constitutionally eligible, because she wasn't 35. So could you talk a little bit about that as sort of a case of itself, and then we can jump into more of the more recent with Margaret Chase Smith?

Dr. Teri Finneman  16:11  
Yeah, I absolutely love the story of Victoria Woodhull, and I was actually really pleased, I was just in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center and saw that she was incorporated into the museum. They have a really great suffrage exhibit right now, and I was just so pleased to see that she's finally getting the recognition that she deserves, because so often when I do these talks, no one has heard of her, despite her groundbreaking role in history. I mean, she was very active in the suffrage movement at the time, right there with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B.Anthony. But yet her name has been forgotten, because some of the suffragists even found her to be too radical and wrote her out of their own history, virtually, right? And so Victoria Woodhull obviously was way ahead of her time. So that just makes it even more astounding that she did what she did by arguing in 1872 that women needed to have rights, not just the right to vote, but she was tired of the control that men had over women's lives entirely, that men were allowed to be having all these affairs outside of a marriage, but women had no rights, and were virtually stuck in these horrible marriages, which helped elevate her free love platform, which, of course, was very controversial at the time, and that's what gets the most attention. But I mean, she was, she was for way more things beyond that, interested in labor and, you know, those minimum wage type of things. And so she was just such a spunky gal. And you know, the press coverage that she got, of course, was just horrendous. They called her Mrs. Satan. They treated her like a total joke. But really, truly, a woman, I think, who should be admired for breaking that or putting that initial crack in the ceiling for women.

Kelly Therese Pollock  18:02  
Yeah, and of course, Victoria Woodhull was not elected. She didn't expect to be. Nobody expected that she would be, but she paves the way then, but is almost even forgotten, like in the early 20th century.

Dr. Teri Finneman  18:16  
I mean, actually, within a decade, yeah, was written off in the press, because when you look at Belva Lockwood, who was the next woman to run in the 1880s even, like the press wasn't even mentioning Victoria Woodhull, so she was very quickly erased from memory. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  18:18  
 Yeah, yeah. So then I want to talk some about Margaret Chase Smith, who is she's interesting because she is not saying that she's a feminist. She is obviously benefiting from certain waves of feminism. She is able to have this amazing career, but is very clear that she herself is not a feminist, and that is not the thing she's trying to do, but she is sort of situated, as you talk about in your book at this weird moment in time that is especially when she runs for president, that is not particularly conducive to her run. So could you sort of place us in time here as she is getting into the House, getting into the Senate, what the United States is like for women's political culture?

Dr. Teri Finneman  19:23  
Yeah. So you see this big lead up in 1920 right with the 19th Amendment and women, well, white women, really getting the right to vote at that time. Of course, it would take years after, before women of color, and of course, today, we still have problems with voting rights. But you really see this period after 1920, with women trying to decide, really what their next step is, and women kind of splintering, like some women are just happy that they got that, and that's the end of it, right? Other women are pushing for more. There's really a splintering of the movement after this point about what should be happening, right? And so you kind of see feminism take a dip. And then, especially after World War, you know, World War II, you see women going into the workplace, right? And then after that, you have another downhill of wanting to return to normality, of women back in the home, right? And so you have this, like, very up and down trying to figure out what the next step is for the women's rights movement. And so you're right. I mean, Margaret Chase Smith was really in this in this time period where it wasn't really in her political favor to emphasize being a feminist, right? She, she didn't want to play that up, because the word feminist to this day, even, right, has such a negative connotation that she was trying to walk a very fine line of both appeasing women voters, but really appeasing male voters, and that she was not going to come up with, you know, all these radical type of proposals, but would perform so to speak more like a man.

Kelly Therese Pollock  21:03  
So she embarks on her political career in a way that many of the first women in various things have done, as the widow of a congressman who's running for his seat, of course, goes well beyond that makes a career far beyond anything he managed to achieve, even. But she doesn't remarry. She doesn't have kids. So she's sort of like embracing this traditional feminine model in some ways. She always wears the pearls and a rose, but she doesn't, the current argument that's happening about, do you have to have kids to have a stake in the, you know, the future, that kind of thing. Like Margaret Chase Smith never has kids, you know, she's not embracing it in that way. Could you talk a little bit about, sort of her self portrayal and this fine line that she is trying to walk?

Dr. Teri Finneman  21:55  
Well, you know, one of the things that that's interesting about her compared to some of the women you mentioned, who got into the race because of their husband's death. Well, backing up, we should first say that in 1916, Jeannette Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress. Jeannette Rankin was also not married and also did not have children when she was elected. And so Margaret Chase Smith was not the first in that, but one of the things that's interesting about Margaret Chase Smith, compared to some of these other women who took over at the death of a spouse, is that she was very well trained at the time of her husband Clyde's death. She had garnered her own political experience, being very active in a business and professional women's club in Maine, getting involved into the Republican political sphere. She went around with Clyde on his campaign trips, learning from him how to appeal to voters. When he was elected to Congress, she put her foot down, and she said, "I will be on your staff, and I will be paid," which she had to fight him on quite a bit and round up support from other voters to pressure him to put her in his office. And so she had experience helping not only run his campaigns, but also helping run his congressional office. And so she had quite a bit of political education herself at the time that he died. And virtually the last thing he did before he died, was put out a statement saying that he supported his wife taking over his seat. So, you know, she has built up very strategically and wisely, this political clout to be able to continue her political career. Now, as far as discussing more the femininity, you know, that I mean that again, goes back to this very fine line that she was walking, trying to show herself that she was a very serious person. She, you know, very much, strived right away to be put on important, you know, so to speak, male committees related to the military and naval affairs, to show that she was here and she wanted to be taken seriously.

Kelly Therese Pollock  24:04  
Yeah, and let's talk then a little bit about her politics. So she is a Republican, but she comes of political age at a time when everybody in Maine was a Republican, so like that, that's not particularly surprising, but she's very much what we would today call a centrist, is sometimes going sort of along with what the Republican Party is doing, but is not afraid to stake her own political identity at all. And then, you know, arguably her most well known moment in history, in 1950, she's really saying both parties are failing and very, very much speaking out against a member of her own party as a Republican. So could you talk a little bit about her politics and how that maybe does or doesn't fit the political moment that she's in?

Dr. Teri Finneman  24:55  
Yeah. I mean, she was, she was very much concerned about communism, right? So initially she understood where Joseph McCarthy was coming from. But then as he went on and on, she kept asking him, "Well, you know what evidence you have, what evidence?" And he kept, you know, weaseling around her. And then finally she realized, because at first she thought, "Well, maybe I just don't get it right. Maybe like he's right, and I just don't get it." But then she, she soon came to realize, "No, this guy is off his rocker," and and really, as you mentioned, plays this pivotal role in June, 1950 with deciding to stand up against him. And you know, to try to have a more modern reference, you can think of this as Liz Cheney bucking against her own party more recently, related to January 6 and Donald Trump, right? This is the same kind of thing, but what Margaret Chase Smith did is a little more unnerving, at least at the beginning, because she is on her way to the Senate chamber and actually runs into McCarthy, and he literally, like, says to her, "Why so serious, Margaret?" which is, oh gosh, right. And so, I mean, she says to him, "Yeah, I'm gonna be making a speech today, and it's gonna be about you like you're not gonna like it." And so he's literally sitting almost directly behind her, like, in the room while she's making this speech, challenging him. And she was very nervous about this. And I mean, it was literally not until she started her speech that she had her chief assistant, like, start handing it out, just in case. You know, she chickened out at the last minute. And so in this speech, her declaration of conscience, as you mentioned, I mean, she was really attacking the state of politics at the time, and I just want to read just a little bit from it, because I think it's really interesting how it aligns with what's going on today. "I do not like the way the Senate has been made a rendezvous for vilification, for selfish political gain, at the sacrifice of individual reputations and national unity. I am not proud of the way we smear outsiders from the floor of the Senate and hide behind the cloak of congressional immunity and still place ourselves beyond criticism." So much of that rhetoric could apply today, right? The smearing that's going on, like claiming you have immunity for what you're saying, it's just so interesting to see how much of what was happening in 1950 still reverberates today. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  27:36  
Yeah, and then, presumably, because that brought her more to national attention, in the 1952 campaign, she's actually talked about as a potential vice presidential candidate under Eisenhower. I mean, that would have changed history, like if, if the Republicans had nominated a woman for vice president that early. It took until 1984 until a major party did that. Could you talk a little bit about that, this idea of her potentially being vice president?

Dr. Teri Finneman  27:38  
Yeah. I mean, you know, at this point she, she had a lot of the same experience as as Lyndon Johnson, like, I mean, they were in the House together, they were in the Senate together. They were on these military type of committees together, right? And so by this point, she has really built up a lot of clout for herself, and then after the speech, of course, and willing to challenge things. I mean, she faced a lot of criticism for that, right? But I mean, she also faced a lot of admiration. And so you do get to 1962 and there's a lot of this speculation. Now, one of my close friends, Pam Perry, is actually working on a book about Eisenhower and gender, and that he deserves more credit for advancement of women that he gets. But I mean, the fact remains that Eisenhower himself clearly did not want a woman to be his vice presidential candidate, right? Otherwise he would have picked her, and so you still have, of course, these gender politics at play. And went with to him, although that didn't really work out well later, but the choice of Richard Nixon, which he considered a safer bet.

Kelly Therese Pollock  29:15  
Yes, what could have been! So then let's talk about 1964. Margaret Chase Smith announces at the end of January that year that she is a candidate for president, and as you outline in your book, she the the press never totally considers her a sort of she's a real candidate, but she's not likely to win, and she doesn't do anything to dissuade them of that. So could you talk some about the framing of her campaign, but how she also contributes to that framing?

Dr. Teri Finneman  29:53  
Yeah, you know, she made very clear from the beginning that she didn't have any money, she didn't have any organization, she wasn't gonna have a real headquarters. She wasn't going to run a real campaign, and that the Senate was her priority, in keeping up her long record of roll call votes and being an active member of the Senate. So from the beginning, she didn't set the best stance for a winning presidential campaign. She she didn't really go out much, except for, you know, very briefly in her free time. And you know, that's just not effective. I mean, when Jeannette Rankin was running for Congress back in 1916, I mean, she was barnstorming all over the place, right? I mean, that's really what's needed to do this. But Margaret Chase Smith also felt that she wanted to, you know, women before her had opened up this opportunity for her, and so she wanted to do her own work to break a path for women. And she did, right? I mean, by becoming the first woman to be placed in nomination at a major political party's convention, she did break a barrier. And I mean, I've read that they ran out of Smith buttons, because people at the time, while they maybe didn't see her as a viable candidate, they still recognized what a moment this was in history. And so because she wasn't active, then the press then, and really too much today is very event driven, like something needs to happen and they'll show up. They aren't always the best at generating content outside of that. And so she didn't tend to get a ton of press coverage beyond just saying she's a candidate, but when she was covered, what was covered was very enlightening, of the sexism at the time. Now, a lot of the criticism that she got, I analyzed over 500 newspaper stories of her the time that she was running for president, and a lot of the people who were quoted were women, which kind of makes sense, right? Because it's supposed to be a major moment in women's history. Let's see what women think about it. Well, women, since the beginning of time in this country, it is quite mind boggling to see, have been their own worst enemy in advancing their own rights. So even when you go back and look at the suffrage movement, you think, "Oh, you know the people who were against women having the right to vote, surely that's, you know, men who are the problem." And believe me, men were a problem, but really it's other women who are the worst, like they're the anti suffrage organizations were run by women. These are literally, cohesively formed organizations by women against the advancement of their own rights. So women have always been a bewildering political bloc since the beginning of this country. So sadly, when you get to 1964, you really don't see much improvement. And so you have women being interviewed in the paper, literally saying, "Being the president is a man's job. It's too much of a job for her. We aren't ready to have a woman in the White House. Women make wonderful wives." I think that actually came from a man, not a woman, but I mean basically saying a woman herself. You know, women are too emotional, and it, it was interesting because one of the newspapers actually interviewed a psychiatrist who was just like, "No. Like, this is kind of bunk. Like, stop saying this. Women can do this job." But the press really didn't do much to besides that one instance to downplay these sexist lies that were especially that were essentially spreading in the press. And so not only do you have this flat, and I mean, it wasn't even about her, right? It wasn't all Margaret Chase Smith, she doesn't have this. She doesn't it was just flat out, she's a woman. No, that's a problem. It doesn't matter who it is, Woman, No, right? And so it's just blatant in coming from other women. But she's also having to contend in the press with this like bizarre double bind, right, where women have to balance being too masculine or they're offensive or being too feminine, and then seen as incompetent. And so you'll see stories that are really playing up her foreign policy and military expertise, but then you see bizarre comments, like, "She can make cool, delicious blueberry muffins." And one of the weirdest sentences was she was an acknowledged defense expert, but also a great lover of flowers, like, you know, I mentioned Lyndon Johnson before. Do you think anybody would say that sentence about Lyndon Johnson, right? Even the Lady Bird was all about the flowers like nobody would write them about him. It was only written about a woman. And so, you know, then they talked about even her high heels and her slender figure, right? And I mean this belittling language that didn't start in the 1960s, it started way before that, and it continues until today, but was just really problematic.

Kelly Therese Pollock  34:45  
Yes, I'm calling to mind in the 90s when Hillary Clinton had to publish the cookie recipe, chocolate chip cookies, I think, yeah so. And it seems like some of the things too, I. Of course, she's running in a primary at this point, so voters are deciding who should represent their party against Lyndon Johnson, who is almost certainly going to win the election no matter who they choose. And so there's this, you know, "I like her, but she can't win," which, of course, is echoed later when women run as well.

Dr. Teri Finneman  35:19  
Yeah. And I mean, one of the things that I wanted to say to add to that, and what I was just saying is, what gets me the most out of all the coverage I looked at is a quote from a school board president, like, literally, from the education system saying, "More power to her. Someone had to start it right?" And that just makes my head explode and tells you, like, how poorly women's history has been taught in K 12 education for basically forever, right? Because someone did start it, like Victoria Woodhull started it in 1872 and now we're in 1964. I mean, you could go back even further right, to the launch of the women's rights movement in the 1840s, and how long women had been politically active for like, a century at this point, right? And yet that was all ignored, and apparently Margaret Chase Smith is just starting it from scratch in 1964 and that is really problematic, because when you treat something like this as a novelty, it's new. We don't really know, right, then that feeds into uncertainty, right? And I mean, one of the things that Margaret Chase Smith in her declaration of conscience, that we were talking about a minute ago, is she was really slamming the spread of fear and ignorance and bigotry that was going on at the time. And, I mean, I would really argue that, you know, the someone had to start it. I mean, that's really spreading fear and ignorance and bigotry with that own kind of sentence. Because women had been putting in the work for over a century in politics at that point, and so it really trivializes women history when people say something like that. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  37:07  
So you just mentioned the hundreds of articles that you looked at. Could you talk just generally about the kind of analysis that you were doing of these women candidates, the type of research, how you were looking at these stories and comparing them across time?

Dr. Teri Finneman  37:25  
Yeah. So I read, just like 1000s of articles covering Victoria Woodhull in 1872, Jeannette Rankin in 1916, Margaret Chase Smith in 1964, and then Sarah Palin in 2008, and I was very specifically looking, finding their name, articles that were written about them, how long the articles were, what the context was, what themes I saw. So did they focus on their politics? Were they focusing on the personal? What kind of sexist language was being used, and how did this evolve across time, to try to see patterns. Right again, my goal was to look at how was it possible in 2016 that Hillary Clinton could potentially be president, like, what had women before her all gone through? And it was actually really interesting to see, well, a couple things. You see a notable movement happen with Sarah Palin's coverage. Now keep in mind that Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton were both prominent  candidate candidates in 2008, and so during that time, both parties were experiencing just this flood of sexism towards their candidates and how problematic this was, and so that was a really, kind of a tipping point. Since then, you've seen much more attention to sexism happening to candidates. It's still happening, but it's at least pointed out more often. And so I wanted to see these changes across time. And what's interesting is into the present, you still see these themes that have been baked in since the very beginning play out. You still see the vilification of women candidates that Victoria Woodhull faced. You'll you still see an emphasis on appearance and the expectation that they're going to discuss women's and children's issues, like Jeannette Rankin faced. You're still seeing, you know, trivialization, and, you know, sexism even coming from other women, that Margaret Chase Smith faced, and then you're still seeing the circus atmosphere that Sarah Palin faced, right? So, like, all of history, like comes together to play into the present, and that's what I was looking at.

Kelly Therese Pollock  39:39  
Yeah. So you've also studied First Ladies and portrayals of First Ladies a lot. I wonder if you could think through a little bit why it is that we know so very little about Margaret Chase Smith, or think so little about her now, even though she had this tremendous, long, groundbreaking career in the House and the Senate, this run for presidency, compared to someone like Eleanor Roosevelt, who held important positions but was never elected to office. They were contemporaries. They were, at times, friends. You know? What? What is it about the way we view these different roles? Or is it the people, like, what do you have any thoughts on why Margaret Chase Smith is just not better known?

Dr. Teri Finneman  40:26  
Yeah. I mean, that's a really great question, isn't it? I mean, I think part of a challenge may be, is that, yes, she was kind of that sole woman in the Senate for a while, which made her unique, but she was still one of a, you know, 400 plus members of Congress, right? And so we don't tend to really get to know members of Congress that well, you know what I'm saying? Like, yeah, today we're aware of Mitch McConnell, but if you went up to anybody on the street, like, how aware are they really of, you know, who he is, right? Whereas, when you're looking at the First Lady and the presidency, they are one that's an extremely unique role that, like only those two people have, right? And they are way more visible in the lives of everyday Americans. And so I think that is partly having a role to play here, but it's also just really goes down to who writes history books, quite frankly, and how many of the people who write these books are men who belittle and trivialize women's history and don't tend to include their achievements. I mean, it was virtually impossible to ignore Eleanor Roosevelt. I mean, she was everywhere, right? I mean, this woman was like a media mogul in her free time too. I mean, you couldn't avoid her. I mean, Margaret Chase Smith did have a newspaper column herself. But, I mean, Eleanor was on the radio. She had her "My Day" column that was constantly in the press. I mean, that woman was everywhere. But, I mean, but I mean, when you look at other First Ladies who are forgotten, right? I mean, if I went up to somebody today and said, you know, Sarah Polk or Frances Cleveland, I mean, they wouldn't have a clue, right? And so some of it has to do with their spouse, right? When you take a look at the First Ladies who are remembered, it's usually because they had a very prominent spouse, right? So Jackie Kennedy, right, gets a lot of attention because her husband has been made into a martyr. Right? Today, Franklin Roosevelt, hard to read. Forget him with everything that he did, right? And so Eleanor is right along with that. But when you look at at these other first ladies whose husbands aren't played up in K 12 history books, then they just tend to get erased.

Kelly Therese Pollock  42:32  
So many people say they want Michelle Obama to run for president.

Dr. Teri Finneman  42:38  
How many times does she have to say No?

Kelly Therese Pollock  42:40  
I know. I know, but I you know. Do you think that the that the opinions of her, the coverage of her would change if she did, she's not going to run, so I'm not in any way suggesting she's going to ever. But do you think that there's a difference in the way that she's covered as First Lady versus the way she would be covered as presidential candidate? And, you know, I mean, we saw this with Hillary Clinton, right? Although she was vilified no matter what she did. But you know, would, would that change the the public and press perception of her? 

Dr. Teri Finneman  43:16  
Oh, certainly. I mean, when you're running for president, anything you have ever done is coming to light. I mean, they'd bring back anything. I mean, it's just laughable now, when you look back at it, right, and all the criticism that she got for wearing sleeveless dresses, right? I mean, the other day, I was looking at photos of Harriet Lane, and, oh my god. I mean, people would have a stroke today. I mean, she was more scantily dressed back then than Michelle Obama was today, in her sleeveless dresses, right? And so again, it's just this lack of understanding of history that leads to ignorant outrage culture just makes my head explode.

Kelly Therese Pollock  43:49  
As we look toward the next few months, we of course, have a woman leading a presidential ticket right now, Kamala Harris. Do you have things that people should be thinking about as they're looking at coverage of her and her campaign, pitfalls people should be watching out for as as this plays out for the next few months?

Dr. Teri Finneman  44:12  
Well, I mean, from a analyzing word choices perspective, it's been interesting to see Donald Trump trying to decide what attack he's going to use for her, and like, trying out all these different lines, right? I mean, actually called her beautiful the other day, which he obviously really didn't mean, right? And so then he's called her crazy. He's mocked her laugh, which, you know, is another sexist stereotype of, essentially, you know, he's referring to like her cackle, right? As if she's a witch, right? Which is another, again, sexist stereotype. And so it's going to be most interesting to see the discourse that he comes up with in the next few months trying to undermine her, and how his supporters respond to that. Now you saw tremendous outrage with JD Vance and his childless cat lady comment. That did not go well whatsoever for the campaign and so, but Donald Trump obviously has no filter and doesn't really seem to care much about what he says, or if anybody's too offended by it. So his word choices are going to be the one to watch. Now, that being said, obviously the press needs to watch itself too, because sexism is so baked in to culture and to word choices that that taking a look at how are they undermining her is going to be interesting to see. So far, there's been, of course, a lot of excitement, because this is very unusual, of course, how she came into this position. So because it is still new, people are still hyped with that. Of course, you've got the Democratic Convention coming up, which is going to be a real opportunity, right for her to give her speech before the entire American public, and what she stands for and how people react to that is going to be interesting. But I would say, yeah, the the discourse of the opposition is going to be the thing to look at.

Kelly Therese Pollock  46:04  
Could you tell listeners how to get more of your writing and your podcasts?

Dr. Teri Finneman  46:12  
Yeah. So the Journalism History podcast has over 150 original episodes to take a look at. And then the First Ladies podcast, we are just wrapping up season one here, which really takes a look at a lot of First Ladies who have been ignored and the contributions that they have made. And then, of course, as you've mentioned before, my book, "Press Portrayals of Women Politicians, 1870s to the 2000s," and then next year, I will be having a co edited book with Lisa Burns about First Ladies come out as well.

Kelly Therese Pollock  46:44  
Excellent. Is there anything else you wanted to make sure we talk about today?

Dr. Teri Finneman  46:50  
The one thing that I kind of did want to note, I wish that I had added more nuance to my own book. The interesting thing about history is that K 12 history textbooks make it sound like everything is just cut and dried and simple, and nothing about history is, and so, you know, one of the things, and I say this in my own book, is that so Margaret Chase Smith was the first woman who was elected to the House and the Senate, and then, as mentioned, the first woman placed in nomination for the presidency at a major political party's convention, but she is also tends to be referred to as the first woman elected to the Senate. And I say this in my own book, but I wish now that I had put more nuance on that, because again, everything is more complicated than it looks. So looking back, it was actually in 1922 that the first woman served in the Senate. Her name was Rebecca Felton, and she only served for like 24 hours. She was just a placeholder of very briefly, for a man who died while they were trying to figure out what to do, but I really want her name to be shared, because these women are forgotten. Now, where the kind of asterisk comes in, as far as Margaret Chase Smith is concerned, because obviously, Rebecca Felton didn't serve more than a day, so that kind of doesn't count, but it does count, and she deserves to be recognized. But it was in 1931 that you have Hattie Caraway, who is appointed to the Senate after her husband died. Okay, but what is important to note is that Hattie Caraway actually did win elections in the Senate after that, and served from 1931 to 1945, so technically, Hattie Caraway should have the title as the first woman elected to the Senate. Now you get that nuance and asterisks in there because Hattie Caraway was filling out her husband's seat still, while Margaret Chase Smith came in totally on her own to the Senate, right? So kind of, in a way, it's kind of like the bronze medal situation that we have going on with women's gymnastics, right? I mean, technically, in a way, both women can have that title, but, but I do think that Hattie deserves recognition for her time in the Senate and that she is ignored.

Kelly Therese Pollock  49:18  
Yes, definitely. Teri, thank you so much for speaking with me. I really enjoyed learning about Margaret Chase Smith. I wish I had known more about her, and I am glad we're getting her name out there just a teeny bit more.

Dr. Teri Finneman  49:34  
Yeah, definitely. I mean, more women's history. Let's rewrite those textbooks. Let me tell you, because yes, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were fantastic. But there is more to history than those two men and World Wars, right? We need to bring to light as you in your show are doing the unsung heroes of history and who deserve recognition.

Kelly Therese Pollock  49:57  
Thank you so much.

Margaret Chase Smith  49:58  
His which I met before in 1948 when I first ran for United States Senator from Maine, when I did not have the money that my opposition did, when I did not have the professional party organization that my opposition had, when it was said that the Senate is no place for a woman, when my physical strength was sapped during the campaign with a broken arm, when my conservative opponent and my liberal opponent in Maine were not restricted in campaigning by official duties in Washington, such as I had, and when practically no one gave me a chance to win.

Teddy  50:57  
Thanks for listening to Unsung History. Please subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app. You can find the sources used for this episode and a full episode transcript @UnsungHistorypodcast.com. To the best of our knowledge, all audio and images used by Unsung History are in the public domain or are used with permission. You can find us on Twitter or Instagram @Unsung__History, or on Facebook @UnsungHistorypodcast. To contact us with questions, corrections, praise, or episode suggestions, please email Kelly@UnsungHistorypodcast.com. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, and tell everyone you know. Bye!

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