President’s Day: Time for a Female in the White House?

Victoria Woodhull campaigned for US President in 1872

by Martha Burk – excerpt republished from Huffington Post

(MediaQuire) This year on President’s Day I want to honor our female presidents. Oh, I forgot. There aren’t any. You’d think it was against the law or something. It probably would have been if the founding fathers had thought of it. They didn’t, because when they wrote the Constitution nobody thought a woman could, or should, ever be president. So there are only two requirements — natural-born citizenship and age 35.

Knowing about Victoria Woodhull inspires women to be daring, outrageous and creative. – Gloria Steinem

It’s not that women haven’t tried. Most people don’t know that the first woman to run for our highest office was Victoria Woodhull, way back in 1870, 50 years before women got the vote. Undaunted by the fact that women could not vote and that she was not yet old enough to legally become president, Woodhull traveled the country campaigning for two years before the election. Her speeches not only advocated the vote, but also birth control, “free love,” and other positions that were a century ahead of her time.  Read Martha Burk’s full story on Huffington Post.

It was Victoria lynn Weston who produced the first documentary on Victoria Woodhull.  Woodhull was the first woman to run for US President in 1872 – and women didn’t even have the right to vote!

If you spliced the genes of Hillary Clinton, Madonna, Heidi Fleiss and Margaret Thatcher, you might have someone like Victoria Woodhull. – –Atlanta Journal & Constitution

Victoria Woodhull burst onto the stage with America’s most radical reformers, reoriented their movements, and was gone. People listened to her. A congressional committee reported on her interpretation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments. She was the first woman to run for president of the United States and the first presidential candidate to spend election day in jail. Harriet Beecher Stowe and Catharine Beecher used their cultural leverage to label her a tramp. Anthony Comstock declared war on her for distributing obscene materials. She almost brought an end to Henry Ward Beecher’s career. America’s Victoria is a biography of this enigmatic figure in American history, the daughter of a swindling father and a spiritualist mother, who remade herself several times to become a Wall Street broker, a radical reformer, and, with her third husband, a British lady of the manor. The story is told by a narrator, several commentators, and readings from Woodhull’s speeches and contemporary documents. — The Journal of American History 

Victoria Woodhull was a fascinating woman, way ahead of her time, an advocate not only of women’s suffrage but of legalized prostitution, equality in marriage, and free love, by which she meant a commitment untrammeled by governmental regulations. She ran for president four times and generally lived a life unimagined by most women (and men) of her day. She is described as electrifying, larger than life, and flamboyant. Interviews with Gloria Steinem, Ellen Dubois (a UCLA historian), and others are filled with enthusiasm and admiration”. Recommended for Women’s Studies collections. – —Library Journal

AMERICA’S VICTORIA is a wonderful chronicle of the life of one of the most important and unrecognized women in US history. Although she was a radical suffragist, she refused to restrict her Presidential campaign to the issue of women’s suffrage.

Instead, she advocated a single sexual standard for men and women, legalization of prostitution and reform of marriage. AMERICA’S VICTORIA combines rare archival images, Woodhull’s own words (ready by KATE CAPSHAW), and illuminating interviews with contemporary feminist, GLORIA STEINEM to present a fascinating portrait of this remarkably brave woman.

AMERICA’S VICTORIA, REMEMBERING VICTORIA WOODHULL was featured at the annual Montreal/Quebec International Film Festival 2010 – honoring 90th year women got the vote!

Order Director’s Cut DVD on Amazon