She was nominated as a prank. But then she accepted the challenge and won.
The first woman to ever get elected mayor in the United States of America allegedly won her post because of men who didn’t want women getting involved in politics.
Her name was Susanna Madora Salter (Kinsey, before she got married.) At 27 years old, she won the mayoral race in the town of Argonia, Kansas where she lived with her husband, Lewis Allison Salter. But, before the day people voted her into power, she supposedly didn’t even know that she was in the running. She was doing her laundry when she found out.
Apparently, a prank was being pulled. Women were just getting more politically involved in Kansas and some men didn’t like that. So, they put Salter’s name on the ballot thinking she would lose in a landslide since most men wouldn’t vote for her. Ultimately, they were hoping her loss would humiliate the women in Argonia and discourage further political ambitions.
Their plan, however, backfired.
Salter’s unusual rise to power happened in 1887. It was an unexpected milestone in equality brought about by two other factors related to women in Kansas: suffrage and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU.)
That year, the women in Kansas were given the right to vote in local elections. They had some semblance of electoral power before because they could vote in school board elections after Kansas earned statehood. But, on this year, their rights were expanded by the Kansas legislature. Women who lived in first, second, and third-class cities were allowed the right to have a say in their municipal leaders. The women of Argonia—being a third-class city—were among them.
Additionally, a local chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union was founded in 1883. This group—a religious organization that originated in Ohio—was a crucial player in the Temperance Movement that sought to curb the consumption of alcohol. This was the group’s agenda in Kansas. And with the right to vote, the women finally had the power to push for the election of candidates in agreement with alcohol prohibition. They called a caucus to select their male candidates and Mrs. Salter—a member of the union—presided over it.
According to Monroe Billington, a writer who eventually married Mrs. Salter’s granddaughter, a group of men in Argonia weren’t happy with what’s been happening.
“[They] felt that the field of politics was their exclusive domain and resented the intrusion of women into their affairs,” he wrote. “Two of these men had attended the WCTU caucus and heckled the proceedings.”
Billington then stated that a secret caucus was called by this faction. In the back room of a local restaurant, 20 of them apparently decided to “teach these females a lesson” by drawing up a slate of candidates identical with that of the WCTU except for one crucial difference: they had Mrs. Salter running for mayor.
“They assumed that the women would vote for the WCTU slate and that the men would not vote for a woman,” he wrote. “They thought if Mrs. Salter got only their 20 votes it would embarrass the WCTU as a political organization. They also felt that such a move would curb some of the WCTU’s political activities.”
According to Billington, Mrs Salter was chosen to be the target of the prank because she was the only WCTU officer who was eligible for the mayoral seat. The others apparently lived outside of the town’s limits. And since it wasn’t a custom at that time for candidates to be revealed to the public before election day, she wasn’t aware that her name was selected and submitted.
Upon learning of her nomination on the day of the election, the surprised chairman of the local Republican Party sent a group of representatives to Salter’s home. They found her doing laundry and told her of what had transpired. They then asked her if she would indeed serve as mayor should she get elected. To this, she replied, “yes.”
Her husband wasn’t happy to find her name in the ballot. He was even more displeased when she found out that she agreed to serve. Still, she didn’t relent and around 4 in the afternoon, together with her parents, she went to the polls and voted.
Members of the WCTU also voted that day. They abandoned their original slate and cast their support for Mrs. Salter. The local Republican Party, having confirmed her desire to serve earlier, also decided to back her. They even spent all day campaigning on her behalf. And in a stunning turn of events, Salter went from being a woman unaware of her involvement in the mayoral race to being its winner. She received about 60 percent of all votes and became the first woman elected as mayor in the US.
Politics isn’t unfamiliar territory for Mrs. Salter’s family. Her father, Oliver Kinsey, was Argonia’s first mayor, and her father-in-law, Melville Judson Salter, was the former Lieutenant Governor of Kansas. She also had a degree of education having studied in Kansas State Agricultural College (present-day Kansas State University) before dropping out due to illness. She wasn’t fully unprepared for this role.
According to Billington, five members of the town council were also elected. Apparently, three of them were part of the group that put her name on the ballot as a joke. But as it turned out, her ruling as mayor went smoothly and they witnessed it firsthand.
“When she called the first council meeting to order,” Billington wrote, “she said, ‘Gentlemen, what is your pleasure? You are the duly elected officials of this town, I am merely your presiding officer.” This set the tone for Mrs. Salter’s term—a government where she didn’t throw her weight around but, instead, gave space for others to push their ideas forward.
Her term was generally uneventful and she didn’t seek reelection. But it did become a much-discussed topic throughout the United States. Reporters visited Argonia to interview its residents and observe Mrs. Salter’s leadership. And they found exactly what many women wanted men to find at that time: a woman capable of doing what was then a man’s job; a precedent to the many who would follow her years later, and a result far from the intentions of the men who wanted to dissuade women from getting into politics.
