Salter, Susanna Medora (1860–1961)
Salter, Susanna Medora (1860–1961)
First woman mayor in the United States. Name variations: Suzanna Madora Salter. Born on March 1, 1860, in Kansas; died on March 17, 1961, in Norman, Oklahoma.
Susanna Salter was a 27-year-old official of the Women's Christian Temperance Union when she went to the polls to vote in the local elections of Argonia, Kansas (population 500). Once there, she discovered that, according to the ballot, she was a mayoral candidate. Accounts vary as to whether she had been nominated by fellow women's temperance workers or by prankster "Wets," but it is clear that Salter neither campaigned for the post nor, indeed, even knew she had been nominated. On that election day in 1887, the first year in which women were allowed to vote in local elections in the state of Kansas, Salter was elected mayor by a two-thirds majority, making her the first woman in the United States to be elected mayor of any city. She served a one-year term as Argonia mayor for which she received one dollar in wages. Salter died on March 17, 1961, shortly after her 101st birthday.
Gloria Cooksey , freelance writer, Sacramento, California