Connie Schultz's review of historian Ellen Fitzpatrick's "The Highest Glass Ceiling"
From today's Washington Post: Clinton is following the frustrated efforts of earlier female candidates
[url]https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/clinton-is-following-the-frustrated-efforts-of-earlier-female-candidates/2016/02/26/b7a736c8-d0c6-11e5-b2bc-988409ee911b_story.html[/url]
In “The Highest Glass Ceiling,” historian Ellen Fitzpatrick tells the compelling stories of three women who preceded Clinton’s quest. Feminist Victoria Woodhull, a rich and beautiful self-declared spiritual medium, ran in 1872, nearly 50 years before women could even vote for her. Republican Sen. Margaret Chase Smith made a name for herself taking on her boorish, witch-hunting colleague, Joseph McCarthy, before running for president in 1964. Democrat Shirley Chisholm was the first female African American member of Congress, and as a presidential candidate she made it to the Democratic Convention in 1972. Her success so enraged Richard Nixon that two high-ranking officials in his administration composed a fake news release on stolen Hubert Humphrey stationery alleging that a “hostile and aggressive” Chisholm, dressed “as a transvestite in men’s clothing,” had spent time in a Virginia mental institution for schizophrenia.
Fitzgerald is a worthy biographer, offering a rich, amply footnoted story of these quick-witted and resilient women. In a world where women were expected to demur, they lived large — and paid the price. One finishes the book believing that they wouldn’t have had it any other way.
