Clean Up This Mess!

PETER: This is BackStory. I’m Peter Onuf.

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HILLARY CLINTON: Tonight we’ve reached a milestone in our nation’s march toward a more perfect union, the first time that a major party has dominated a woman for president.

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PETER: In Philadelphia, Hillary Rodham Clinton moved one step closer to becoming the first female president of the United States. Clinton stands on the shoulders of generations of women who fought for the right to vote. But even before they won that right in 1920, women found ways to influence politics.

In the spring of 1863, a Confederate woman led a hungry mob of several hundred, demanding bread or blood.

STEPHANIE MCCURRY: She told these women to come tomorrow. We’re going to have a riot. You’ll need a babysitter. And come armed.

PETER: From Dolley Madison’s parlor politics to other women who sought the White House, a history of women in politics today on BackStory.

ANNOUNCER: Major funding for BackStory is provided by the Shiocan Foundation, The National Endowment for the Humanities, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

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From the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, this is BackStory With the American Backstory hosts.

BRIAN: Welcome to the show. I’m Brian Balogh. And I’m here with Ed Ayers.

ED: Hey, Brian.

BRIAN: And Peter Onuf’s with us.

PETER: Hey there, Brian.

BRIAN: We’re going to start today in 1920 in the scenic town of Jackson, Wyoming, known today as Jackson Hole.

SHERRY SMITH: A very small town of about 350 people nestled in a mountain valley, and so it’s absolutely gorgeous.

BRIAN: This is Sherry Smith. She’s a historian at Southern Methodist University, and a resident of Moose, Wyoming. That’s near Jackson. Smith says that in 1920, Jackson wasn’t so gorgeous.

SHERRY SMITH: The streets were full of mud. And the town square was full of garbage. And the place was frankly a mess.

BRIAN: It had no sewage system, no streetlights, no official cemetery, and barely any money in the town coffers. This disrepair prompted the residents to call a meeting with the town’s elected officials.

SHERRY SMITH: But the problem was, the men who had been in office didn’t want to be in office anymore. So they were not interested in running and responding to these demands for some change in the town.

BRIAN: Government in such a small town was a part-time job. And the men in charge made it clear that Jackson’s problems were a distraction from their real jobs, things like running ranches, restaurants, and hotels. That didn’t go over well with a group of women at the gathering.

SHERRY SMITH: Apparently, somebody in the crowd hearing the women, who were quite outspoken about their concerns, said well why don’t we have the women run it and have the women do this? And, you know, partly it was probably a joke. But some of the women there said, yeah, you know, not a bad idea.

BRIAN: This was a time when few women held elected office anywhere in the country. But a group of Jackson women ran for all the council seats and even mayor. The women ran on a simple platform, to literally clean up the streets.

It was an effective message. Voters swept this group of women into office. By the end of 1920, all of Jackson’s elected officials were women. Then they set about appointing women to nearly every public job in town, including town marshal.

SHERRY SMITH: She was like five foot two, a tiny little thing. She did carry a revolver with a pearl handle.

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PETER: The news of a woman-run town quickly spread across the country. It was an irresistible blend of the old Wild West and a new type of America that was just emerging. Smith singles out an article that ran in the L.A. Times.

SHERRY SMITH: Jackson’s Hole broke into print many times in early days through its running fights, revolver duels, and thrilling escapes. This time, the trouble was merely a battle of ballots between men and women. And the thrilling escape consisted of the men’s deliverance from the horrors of trying to run a small-town government.

PETER: But there was another reason this story made national news in 1920. Americans were consumed by the question of whether the 19th Amendment would be ratified, finally granting all women the right to vote. The newspapers tended to treat Jackson’s election as amusing or, at the very least, a novelty. To Smith, these news stories show how uncomfortable many Americans were with the idea of women in charge. Jackson was, if only jokingly, a cautionary tale.

BRIAN: But in Jackson, the election didn’t represent a political watershed or a grand endorsement of the suffrage movement. It wasn’t even particularly newsworthy for very long. Take this diary entry from one of the elected officials, Genevieve Van Vleck.

SHERRY SMITH: On Monday, May 10, she wrote, Roy, her husband, painted the kitchen. On Tuesday, May 11, village election, men furious. Wednesday, May 12, Roy painted the bathroom and the pantry.

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BRIAN: In the end, the women of Jackson turned out to be remarkably effective administrators. They collected back taxes, graded the roads, cleaned up the town square, and organized trash collection. But Smith says that same pragmatism is what prompted the women to walk away from politics once they got the job done.

SHERRY SMITH: The women themselves finally did not see themselves as people who set out to break down barriers. Their purpose was to make town improvement the centerpiece of government here. They achieved that in a couple of years. And then they were happy to step back and let men take over again, which is exactly what happened. In fact, the next time a woman was elected mayor of Jackson was in 2001.

BRIAN: What to make of that 80 year gap between Jackson’s first and second female mayors. Smith says it shows that in American political history, the role of women evolves but often unpredictably.

SHERRY SMITH: So when you look at any social movement, there are periods when there seems to be progress. But then there are moments when, after victories, people kind of pull back. So it’s not this arc of constant progression, but kind of forward and backward, forward and backward.