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poverished Americans. She passed an amendment to the Law Enforce-

ment Assistance Act that denied funds to jurisdictions that discriminated

and an amendment to a revenue-sharing bill that created a civil rights

provision in it. In addition, she was instrumental in passing the Extended

Voting Rights Act in 1975, which added other people of color to the

African Americans included in the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

At the 1976 Democratic National Convention, Jordan once again

captivated listeners with her beautiful and resonant voice and her extraor-

dinary thoughts. She electrified the convention hall by saying: “We are a

people in search of a national community, attempting to fulfill our na-

tional purpose, to create and sustain a society in which all of us are equal.

I have the confidence that the Democratic Party can lead the way. We can-

not improve on the system of government handed down to us by the

founders of the Republic, but we can find new ways to implement that sys-

tem and to realize our destiny.” She did not seek a fourth term in Congress.

Jordan was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1973, and by 1977 a

second attack of the disease had significantly reduced her mobility. Ini-

tially, Jordan had managed to camouflage the affects of the disease, which

became increasingly difficult after the second attack, but she steadfastly

refused to reveal the disease from which she suffered until 1988. When she

announced her retirement, she had no career plans.

In 1979, Jordan was named to the Lyndon B. Johnson Chair in Na-

tional Policy at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the Uni-

versity of Texas at Austin. For the next five years, she retreated from pub-

lic life and devoted herself to teaching.

She emerged from her self-imposed seclusion to actively campaign

for presidential candidate Walter Mondale and vice presidential candidate

Geraldine Ferraro, as well as for other Democratic nominees in the 1984

general elections. In 1987, Jordan gained increased visibility as she raised

her voice in opposition to Judge Robert Bork’s nomination for the U.S.

Supreme Court. Because he had opposed civil rights cases, she joined oth-

ers in mounting a significant campaign against Bork, who was not con-

firmed. When Ann Richards ran for governor of Texas in 1990, Jordan

helped in the campaign, serving as Richards’s ethics counsel. After

Richards’s election, Jordan met with the people Richards appointed to

state government positions and discussed ethics in government with them.

Once again, at the 1992 Democratic National Convention, Jordan

delivered a keynote address. She held the delegates’ attention by saying:

We can change the direction of America’s engine and become

proud and competitive again. The American dream is not dead.

True, it is gasping for breath, but it is not dead. However, there

is no time to waste because the American dream is slipping

Jordan, Barbara Charline 365

away from too many. It is slipping away from too many black

and brown mothers and their children; from the homeless of

every color and sex; from the immigrants living in communi-

ties without water and sewer systems. The American dream is

slipping away from the workers whose jobs are no longer there

because we are better at building war equipment that sits in

warehouses than we are at building decent housing.

As chair of the Commission on Immigration Reform from 1993 to

1996, she objected to a proposal to deny automatic citizenship to children

born in this country whose parents are illegal immigrants. She told Con-

gress: “To deny birthright citizenship would derail this engine of Ameri-

can liberty.” Jordan wrote her autobiography, Barbara Jordan: A Self Por-

trait, in 1979.

See also Congress, Women in; Democratic Party, Women in the; Ferraro,

Geraldine Anne; Richards, Ann Willis; Voting Rights Act of 1965

References H. W. Wilson, Current Biography Yearbook 1993 (1993); Jordan and

Hearon, Barbara Jordan (1979); Rogers, Barbara Jordan: American Hero (1998).

Jumper, Betty Mae (b. 1923)

The first woman to serve as chair of the

Seminole Tribal Council, Betty Mae

Jumper worked to help the tribe move to-

ward economic self-sufficiency. In 1957,

when the Seminole tribe formally orga-

nized, Jumper was elected to the tribal

council for a two-year term and then

served on its board of directors for four

years. She was elected chairperson of the

Seminole Tribal Council in 1967, serving a

four-year term, and was the first woman to

chair any tribe in North America. As chair,

Jumper worked to improve health, em-

ployment, education, welfare, and housing

conditions for Seminoles. During her

tenure, the tribe entered into land lease

and other agreements to help it move to-

ward economic self-sufficiency. Active in

the National Tribal Chairman’s Association, Jumper was a founder of

United Southeastern Tribes.

Born at Indiantown, Florida, Betty Mae Jumper completed a one-year

nursing program at Kiowa Indian Hospital in Oklahoma. She returned to

the Seminole reservation and worked with the public health nurse.

366 Jumper, Betty Mae

Betty Mae Jumper,

chief of the Seminole

Nation, 1998

(Courtesy: Seminole

Nation)

She wrote her memoir,...And with the Wagon Came God’s Word,

in 1980.

References Bataille, ed., Native American Women (1993); www.seminoletribe.com.

Juries, Women on

The English common law heritage that formed the basis of American

colonial law persisted in several aspects of women’s status, including their

service on juries. During the American colonial period, jury duty was a re-

sponsibility reserved for white men, and women’s role on juries was lim-

ited to determining if a defendant was pregnant in two situations, when

the defendant made a request to have a stay of execution until after the

birth of her child, and when a widow made the request to delay the dis-

position of her deceased husband’s estate until after childbirth. The ques-

tion of guilt or innocence was reserved for male jurors. By the end of the

colonial period, even this restricted role was removed when male medical

practitioners began deciding whether or not the defendant was pregnant

and replaced the women.

The ratification of the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,

providing that “the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public

trial, by an impartial jury of the State,” did little to change women’s roles

on juries. In addition, state constitutions written after the Revolution

adopted common law practices of trial by jury, but they did not specifi-

cally include women jurors, policies upheld by the courts.

In Stauder v. West Virginia (1879), the Supreme Court held that ex-

cluding African Americans from juries denied blacks equal protection and

due process under the Fourteenth Amendment, but the decision clearly

stated that women could be excluded. Afterward, women’s rights activists

continued to point out that women suffered a disability because women

had never been judged by a jury of their peers.

In Wyoming, women served on juries after the state constitution was

ratified in 1890, but their service did not last long. An 1892 court decision

found that women had no right to sit on juries unless specifically permit-

ted by state statute. In 1898, women in Utah became the first U.S. women

to qualify for jury service without subsequently losing the right.

With the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment granting women suf-

frage rights in 1920, a few states made women automatically eligible for

jury service. The Illinois state supreme court decided that because women

had not been voters at the time the state’s statutes on jury service had been

written, women could not serve on juries. The Illinois state legislature de-

feated bills granting women the right to serve on juries in 1923, 1925, 1927,

and 1929 and then sent the issue to the voters in 1930. The state supreme

Juries, Women on 367

court, however, ruled the referendum unconstitutional. Not until 1939

could Illinois women finally serve on juries. Connecticut women lobbied

the state’s legislature from 1921 to 1937, when they succeeded. In other

states, women argued to serve on juries as a right and began organizing

state legislative campaigns to remove the word male from jury statutes.

Opponents to women’s jury service believed that women’s obliga-

tions to their husbands and children should take precedence over their

obligations to the state. Some states, however, permitted women to serve

on juries if they went to the county courthouse and registered their will-

ingness to be jurors, making jury service a right but not an obligation.

Feminists opposed this permissive approach because if women were to be

judged by a jury of their peers, then other women had to be willing to

serve as jurors.

The permissive approach survived a challenge in the U.S. Supreme

Court in 1961, when a Florida woman convicted of murder appealed the

verdict on the basis of the all-male jury that decided her case. In arguing

the case, Hoyt v. Florida, before the Court, the Florida assistant attorney

general explained that women could not be required to serve on juries be-

cause they have “to cook the dinners!” The Court said that “woman is still

regarded as the center of the home and family life” and found permissive

jury duty constitutional.

Some changes, however, had occurred. The Civil Rights Act of 1957

made women eligible to serve on all federal juries. In 1921, thirty-seven

states excluded women from jury service, but in 1965, only Alabama, Mis-

sissippi, and South Carolina prohibited women from serving on juries. By

1973, women could serve on juries in every state, but in nineteen states

special exemptions for women remained.

In 1975, the U.S. Supreme Court reconsidered state policies that re-

quired women to register before becoming eligible for jury duty and

found them a violation of Sixth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment

rights in Taylor v. Louisiana, ending different policies for jury service for

women and men.

See also Fourteenth Amendment; Hoyt v. Florida; League of Women Voters;

Nineteenth Amendment; Suffrage; Taylor v. Louisiana

References Lemons, The Woman Citizen: Social Feminism in the 1920s (1973);

Mead and Kaplan, eds., American Women: The Report of the President’s

Commission on the Status of Women and Other Publications of the Commission

(1965); Sachs and Wilson, Sexism and the Law (1978); Schweber, “But Some

Were Less Equal...the Fight for Women Jurors” (1979).

368 Juries, Women on

Kahn, Florence Prag (1868–1948)

Republican Florence Kahn of California served in the U.S. House of Rep-

resentatives from 2 February 1925 to 3 January 1937. Married to Con-

gressman Julius Kahn, Florence Kahn gained political experience working

with him. After he died in office, she won election to fill the vacancy.

When she entered the House, she was assigned to the Committee on In-

dian Affairs but refused to accept it, saying: “the only Indians in my dis-

trict are in front of cigar stores and I can’t do anything for them.” She re-

ceived an assignment to the committee on education and then to military

affairs, her first choice. She was the first woman to serve on the House Ap-

propriations Committee.

Kahn sought to end Prohibition because she was convinced that it

could not be enforced. A supporter of enlarging the military and estab-

lishing military bases in California, she was also instrumental in obtaining

congressional authorization for $75 million to build the San Francisco

Bay Bridge connecting San Francisco and Oakland. She lost her attempt

for a seventh term and returned to private life.

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Florence Kahn graduated from the Uni-

versity of California at Berkeley in 1887. She then taught high school En-

glish and history.

See also Congress, Women in

References Engelbarts, Women in the United States Congress, 1917–1972 (1974);

Office of the Historian, U.S. House of Representatives, Women in Congress,

1917–1990 (1991); Tolchin, Women in Congress: 1917–1976 (1976).

Kelley, Florence (1859–1932)

Social reformer Florence Kelley played pivotal roles in the passage of wage

and hours laws to protect women workers, in the creation of the Chil-

dren’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor, and in developing public

support to prohibit child labor. As secretary of the National Consumers

League, she organized dozens of local affiliates and two international con-

ferences.

Born in Philadelphia, Kelley graduated from Cornell University in

1882. She began studies at the University of Zurich in 1883, became a so-

cialist, and translated Friedrich Engels’s The Condition of the Working

Class in England in 1844 into English; it was published in New York in

1887. Over the next few years, she married, bore three children, and re-

turned to New York. In 1891, Kelley and her children moved to Illinois,

and she divorced her husband.

An investigator for the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1892, she

reported the conditions in about 1,000 garment industry sweatshops.

Based on that research and a survey of city slums that she participated in,

Kelley developed a group of proposals to limit the hours women could

work in factories to eight hours per day and forty-eight hours per week,

ban child labor for children under fourteen years old, regulate the labor of

children fourteen to sixteen years old, and create a state factory inspector’s

office. Kelley lobbied the Illinois legislature for the package of proposals,

and in 1893, the legislature passed it. Appointed Illinois’s chief factory in-

spector in 1893, Kelley used the position to publicized the deplorable con-

ditions in which children worked. Removed from office in 1897 for polit-

ical reasons, Kelley traveled widely, speaking around the country on

improving working conditions and advocating labor legislation.

Kelley became the general secretary of the National Consumers

League in 1899 and continued to work on behalf of women and children

in the labor force. When an Oregon law limiting the number of hours that

women could work was challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court, Kelley

372 Kelley, Florence

helped recruit Louis D. Brandeis as counsel for the case and helped com-

pile the research included in the famous Brandeis brief. In Muller v. Ore-

gon (1908), the Court decided in favor of protective labor legislation for

women. Kelley continued to take her protective labor legislation message

around the country, drafted the model minimum wage law adopted by

Massachusetts in 1912, and contributed to nine states’ decisions to enact

minimum wage legislation.

To address the problems of child labor, Kelley and Lillian Wald had

organized the New York Child Labor Committee in 1902 and the National

Child Labor Committee in 1904. Wald and Kelley sought the creation of a

federal children’s commission and developed support for it among settle-

ment house workers and other social reformers. Congress established the

Children’s Bureau in 1912 to gather information about children in the la-

bor force. After Congress passed a bill limiting child labor and the U.S.

Supreme Court found it unconstitutional, Kelley turned her attention to

passing a child labor amendment.

Kelley was a founding member of the National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People and worked in the suffrage movement.

See also Child Labor Amendment; Children’s Bureau; Congressional Union;

Muller v. Oregon; National Association for the Advancement of Colored

People, Women in the; National Consumers League; Protective Legislation;

Suffrage; Wald, Lillian D.; Women’s International League for Peace and

Freedom

References Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work (1995); Trattner, Crusade

for the Children: A History of the National Child Labor Committee and Child

Labor Reform in America (1970).

Kelly, Edna Patricia Kathleen Flannery (1906–1997)

Democrat Edna Kelly of New York served in the U.S. House of Represen-

tatives from 8 November 1949 to 3 January 1969. Kelly entered politics

following her husband’s death in 1942. With the encouragement of a po-

litical leader who had been a friend of her husband’s, Kelly revived the

women’s auxiliary of the Madison Democratic Club and joined the staff

of the Democratic Party delegation in the New York legislature. The

Democratic Party chose her for its nominee to fill a vacancy created by an

incumbent’s death. In her campaign, Kelly pledged to work for issues she

believed to be important to women, including an investigation of milk

prices, opposition to excise taxes, and the creation of day care centers.

An expert in foreign policy, particularly on the Soviet bloc, she sup-

ported the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a defense

against communism and helped write the legislation that created the

Peace Corps. She consistently opposed any programs that would provide

Kelly, Edna Patricia Kathleen Flannery 373

aid to Communist nations, particularly Yugoslavia, and successfully

passed amendments that excluded those nations from aid programs. She

passed a measure leading to an international effort that resettled more

than 1.5 million displaced persons, primarily of Eastern European and

Russian descent, following World War II. She was also instrumental in

sponsoring measures that provided financial assistance to educational and

health institutions in Israel. She held the leadership position of secretary

of the Democratic Caucus in the 83rd, 84th, and 88th Congresses (1953–

1955, 1955–1957, and 1963 to 1965) and was Democratic national com-

mitteewoman for New York from 1956 to 1968. Redistricting in 1968

placed her and another incumbent in the same congressional district, and

despite a spirited primary campaign, Edna Kelly lost the election.

Born in East Hampton, New York, Edna Kelly earned her bachelor of

arts degree from Hunter College in 1928.

See also Congress, Women in; Democratic Party, Women in the

References Engelbarts, Women in the United States Congress, 1917–1972 (1974);

H. W. Wilson, Current Biography: Who’s News and Why, 1949 (1949); New York

Times, 17 December 1997; Tolchin, Women in Congress: 1917–1976 (1976).

Kelly, Sue W. (b. 1936)

Republican Sue Kelly of New York entered the U.S. House of Representa-

tives on 3 January 1995. Congresswoman Kelly has worked to balance the

budget, create opportunities for small businesses, and eliminate the capi-

tal gains tax. She supports reproductive rights, capital punishment, a pres-

374 Kelly, Sue W.

Representative Sue

Kelly (R-NY), with

Representative Jim

Moran (D-VA) and

Representative Eliot

Engel (D-NY), held a

press conference

about being denied

entry into Yugoslavia

to monitor elections

of ethnic Albanians

in Kosovo, 1998

(Associated Press AP)