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A Prank Led to America’s First Nominated Female to Office, and Other Lesser Known American History Facts

Khalid Elhassan December 13, 2019 33 min

37. The Prank Candidate Slate

Susanna Salter’s home in Argonia, Kansas. Art Davis

A group of about twenty men from Argonia was upset by both women’s involvement in politics, and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union’s pro-Prohibition stance. So they decided to kill two birds with one stone: get a good laugh, and discourage women from political participation. There was no legal requirement to secure candidates’ consent before placing their names on ballots. So just before Argonia’s 1887 municipal elections, they prepared a slate of candidates comprised of WCTU members, with Susana Salter heading the slate as mayor.

They figured that no man would vote for a woman, Salter would lose, the WCTU would be humiliated, and having learned their lesson, women would grow discouraged and refrain from voting or getting involved in politics in the future. Things did not work out the way the pranksters figured they would.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.