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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

36. The Prank Backfires

When the polls opened on the morning of April 4^th, 1887, Susana M. Salter was unaware that she was on the ballot. She first found out when a local Republican Party delegation went to her house, to ask if she was actually running for mayor. She had not been – until then. Asked if she would serve as mayor if actually elected, Salter said “yes”. The Republicans backed her, and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union abandoned its candidate, and voted as a block for Salter.

She won over 60% of the vote, and America got its first female mayor. Her term was relatively uneventful, but her election became global news. Domestic and foreign press frequently reported on Argonia’s town meetings, women’s suffrage took a step forward, and instead of humiliating female voters, Argonia’s chauvinist pranksters were the ones who ended up humiliated. As to Salter, she eventually resettled in Oklahoma, where she lived to the ripe old age of 101, before passing away in 1961.

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.