Meet the first woman to run for US president

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Meet the first woman to run for US president

10:12 CAT | 08 Nov 2016

Reuters / Victoria Claflin Woodhull in an undated file photo

Hillary Clinton could become the first woman to be elected president of the United States.

But the Democratic Party candidate is not the first woman to put herself forward for the office.

In 1870 the women’s rights activist Victoria Woodhull became the first woman to campaign for the presidency, some 50 years before US women gained the right to vote.

Born in Ohio in 1838, Woodhull was a 19th century icon for the emancipation of women, working for women’s rights up to her death in London in 1927. She ran a brokerage firm on Wall Street as well as a newspaper, while also having a reputation as a so-called “magnetic healer.”

In 1872 she was the candidate for the Equal Rights Party, nominating the African American human rights activist Frederick Douglass as her vice-presidential running mate, although he did not officially acknowledge his nomination.

Woodhull received backing from trade unionists and socialists, while conservatives rejected her radical political views and her advocacy of “free love.”

Opponents attacked her openly expressed views on sexuality.

In return, Woodhull publicly accused the prominent church minister Henry Ward Beecher of adultery along with stockbroker Luther Challis.

She was arrested for this, spending the night of the election in prison.

Source: DPA