On January 12, 1932, voters elected Hattie Caraway to a full Senate term, making her the first woman to win election to the U.S. Senate in her own right after being appointed to fill her deceased husband's seat. She went on to serve until 1945, championing New Deal legislation and equal rights measures.
Caraway's rise was accidental by design: after Senator Thaddeus Caraway died in 1931, Arkansas's governor appointed her as a caretaker, expecting her to step aside quietly. Instead, she filed to run for the seat herself, surprising the political establishment that assumed a widow would simply vacate the position for a male successor.
She campaigned with unlikely help from Louisiana's flamboyant Senator Huey Long, who barnstormed Arkansas on her behalf even though the two shared little political chemistry. Reporters nicknamed her "Silent Hattie" for her reluctance to give speeches, but her quiet demeanor belied real legislative persistence.
Caraway went on to co-sponsor the Equal Rights Amendment in 1943, becoming the first woman senator to back it, and supported New Deal farm relief for her home state. Her election cracked open, however narrowly, the assumption that the Senate was an exclusively male institution.
Key people: Hattie Caraway, Huey Long