When Victoria Woodhull announced her presidential candidacy in 1870, women were still 50 years away from the right to vote. However, there was no law prohibiting them from running for office. She ran as the nominee for the Equal Rights Party and was supported by suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton among others. On January 11, 1871, Woodhull became the first woman to deliver a speech to Congress, speaking on the necessity of a woman’s right to vote.

She tried to run for president again in 1884 and 1892 but was unable to secure an official nomination. She died in 1927 at the age of 88.

Woodhull once said, “The truth is that I am too many years ahead of this age, and the exalted views and objects of humanitarianism can scarcely be grasped as yet by the unenlightened mind of the average man.

Belva Lockwood, the first woman attorney to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States & first woman to appear on official ballots as a candidate for U. S. president in 1884 & 1888.