At the height of the Red Scare, Margaret Chase Smith (R), the first woman to represent Maine in Congress and the first woman to serve in both the House and the Senate, became America’s conscience.
In an address aimed squarely at Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s (R-Wis.) hunt for communists, Smith warned against a Republican Party riding “to political victory on the four horsemen of calumny — fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear.”
“Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America,” Smith warned. Americans who spoke their mind were in danger of being “smeared as ‘Communists’ or ‘Fascists’ by their opponents.”
Fourteen years later, Smith sought the 1964 Republican nomination for president. She did not win a primary, but she became the first woman to have her name placed in contention for the presidency at a major party convention.
Smith lost her seat in 1972 to Sen. William Hathaway (D). In 1989, President George H.W. Bush awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She died in 1995, the last living senator born in the 19th century.
— Zack Budryk
photo: Library of Congress/Harris & Ewing Collection