The First Female to Run for President, and It's Not Who You Think

Why was her platform free love?

The first female to run for president was not who you are probably thinking of. The year wasn’t 2024 or 2016. It wasn’t even 1924 or 1916. Think earlier.

The year was 1872 when the Equal Rights Party nominated a female for president and civil rights advocate Frederic Douglass for vice president. I recently researched historical newspapers through GenealogyBank.com to learn how this historic event was portrayed in the press.

Many of the newspaper articles covering these nominations include slurs, both racial and sexist, that couldn’t be printed today without significant backlash and redactions. One newspaper article, however, revealed hard news and colorful information about the election of 1872 and the riff among the suffragists that led to the first female nominated for president by a political party. Her platform was free love, not the 1960s kind but the 1870s kind.

Read the article on GenealogyBank.com.

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