Schenken Suzanne O’Dea. From Suffrage to the Senate: An Encyclopedia of American Women in Politics (2 Volumes)

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and received an appointment on the committee. In 1980, she won a seat

in the Oregon House of Representatives, served in the body from 1981 to

1985, and became the state’s first woman majority leader in 1983. Elected

secretary of state in 1984, she won reelection in 1988. As secretary of state,

Roberts sponsored election reform legislation, policies to ensure polling

places’ accessibility to people with disabilities, and construction of a new

state archives building.

Born in Corvallis, Oregon, Roberts attended Portland State Univer-

sity, Marylhurst College, and the John F. Kennedy School of Government

at Harvard University.

See also Governors, Women; State Legislatures, Women in

References Mullaney, Biographical Directory of the Governors of the United States

1988–1994 (1994); Roberts, “Coloring Outside the Lines” (1998).

Robertson, Alice Mary (1854–1931)

Republican Alice Robertson of Oklahoma served in the U.S. House of

Representatives from 4 March 1921 to 3 March 1923. She campaigned

with the slogan “Christianity, Americanism, Standpattism.”

Even though she had opposed woman suffrage and had served as

vice president of the state antisuffrage league, she ran for Congress in the

first election following the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Robertson pledged to help farmers, women, and soldiers during her 1920

campaign.

In Congress, she opposed the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and In-

fancy Protection Act of 1921, a measure that funded maternity and infant

care and was a key piece of legislation advocated by suffragists. Robertson

attacked the measure, describing it as paternalistic, a threat to the American

family, and Bolshevistic. She argued that it provided only instruction, which

she interpreted as propaganda. Robertson supported limiting immigration,

saying: “We are taking in foreign people so rapidly that we cannot Ameri-

canize them. Too many are here already who do not appreciate American

liberties and are doing their best to tear the nation down.” Despite a cam-

paign promise to support veterans, Robertson opposed the veterans’ bonus

bill, saying the nation could not afford it. Her constituents protested her op-

position to the bill by defeating her in the 1922 general elections.

After her defeat, Robertson said that politics was too rough and im-

moral for women, and she willingly retired. President Warren Harding ap-

pointed her a social worker at the Veterans Hospital in Muskogee, Okla-

homa, in 1923. She left after a few months and became the Washington

correspondent for the Muskogee News and then worked for the Oklahoma

Historical Society.

Robertson, Alice Mary 579

The daughter of missionaries, Robert-

son was born at Tullahassee Mission, Creek

Nation, Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).

After attending Elmira College from 1871

to 1873, she was a clerk in the Office of In-

dian Affairs from 1873 to 1879, and she

taught school at Tullahassee and then at

Carlisle Indian School. From 1885 to 1899,

Robertson was the administrator of the

Oklahoma Indian Territory Girls’ School, a

Presbyterian boarding school for girls. It

became the Henry Kendall College, a coed-

ucational facility, in 1894. She supervised

Creek Indian schools from 1900 to 1905

and then became a postmaster until 1913.

She wrote Alice Mary Robertson of Okla-

homa (1912).

See also Congress, Women in; Sheppard-Towner

Maternity and Infancy Protection Act of 1921;

Suffrage

References Office of the Historian, U.S. House of

Representatives, Women in Congress, 1917–1990

(1991); Stanley, “Alice M. Robertson, Oklahoma’s

First Congresswoman” (1967).

Robinson, Ruby Doris Smith (1941–1967)

A founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,

Ruby Robinson served as its executive secretary from 1966 to 1967. She

began her civil rights activism as a college sophomore, participating in a

lunch-counter sit-in in Greensboro, North Carolina, and in other demon-

strations at restaurants to protest segregation. In April 1960, she attended

the meeting at Shaw University that led to the formation of the Student

Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

In 1961, Robinson joined other SNCC members in Rock Hill, South

Carolina, where she sat at a segregated lunch counter and was arrested

with three of her companions. Sentenced to thirty days in jail, she refused

bail in order to further focus attention on segregation and served her

term. It was the first time that civil rights workers arrested for this viola-

tion chose to serve the full sentence rather than post bail. She was arrested

in Jackson, Mississippi, for attempting to use a white restroom. Charged

with breaching the peace, she was given a suspended sentence and fined

$200, but refused to pay the fine. She spent two weeks in a county jail with

580 Robinson, Ruby Doris Smith

Representative Alice

Mary Robertson

(R-OK) who opposed

woman suffrage, ran

for Congress the same

year women got the

vote, 1920 (UPI/

Corbis)

as many as twenty-three others and then was sent to the maximum secu-

rity area of the Parchman State Penitentiary for forty-five days.

During the summer of 1961, Robinson participated in a voter regis-

tration drive in McComb, Mississippi, and attended a training seminar at

Fisk University. The next summer, she worked with the SNCC project in

Cairo, Illinois, and in the fall joined SNCC as a full-time administrative

assistant to the executive secretary. She organized student volunteers, as-

sisted the field staff, and handled emergencies. By 1962, she had also be-

come one of the organization’s intellectual leaders and one of its most

dedicated administrators. Elected executive secretary of SNCC in 1966,

she had come to believe that the movement needed to alter its focus from

civil rights legislation to fundamental socioeconomic change. Early in

1967, Robinson became terminally ill with a form of blood cancer. She

died in October 1967.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Robinson enrolled in Spelman College in

1959 and received her bachelor of science degree from that institution

in 1965.

See also Civil Rights Movement, Women in the

References Hardy, American Women Civil Rights Activists (1993).

Roe v. Wade (1973)

In Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court declared invalid all state laws re-

stricting abortion in the first three months of pregnancy, using the right

of privacy as the basis for the decision. In this case, Jane Roe, later identi-

fied as Norma McCorvey, a single, pregnant woman living in Texas,

wanted a legal abortion, but Texas law at the time permitted legal abor-

tions only if the life of the mother was endangered by the pregnancy. Roe’s

pregnancy did not appear to endanger her life, so if she had obtained an

abortion in Texas, it would have been a criminal act. Roe argued that the

law was unconstitutionally vague and infringed on her right of privacy, a

right that she asserted was protected by the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and

Fourteenth Amendments.

The decision, written by Justice Harry Blackmun, reviewed English

common law, early abortion legislation from the colonial period to the

time of the decision, the American Medical Association’s involvement in

abortion, the American Bar Association’s positions on abortion law, and

other historical considerations. He noted three explanations for the crim-

inalization of abortion: (1) the laws were an attempt by nineteenth-cen-

tury Victorians to discourage illicit sexual conduct; (2) the laws attempted

to protect women from the dangers of abortion that existed during the

nineteenth century when most of the laws were enacted; and (3) the state

Roe v. Wade 581

had an interest in protecting maternal and fetal life. On the first point, he

accepted the argument that the Texas law was too broad and was not a

proper state purpose. On the second point, he noted improved medical

practices that reduced the dangers of infection but indicated that the state

has a role to play in protecting women’s health and safety. On the third

point, he wrote that the state may have interests beyond the protection of

the woman that include protecting fetal life after viability (sometime dur-

ing the third trimester).

Blackmun pointed out that the U.S. Constitution does not explicitly

mention a right of privacy but that the Court had recognized certain areas

of privacy. He suggested that it might be found in the Fourteenth Amend-

ment’s statements on personal liberty and its restrictions on state action or

in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people. Regardless

of its constitutional basis, Blackmun wrote that it “is broad enough to en-

compass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”

Limitations on the right existed, however. During the first trimester,

abortions could be performed without state interference. After the first

trimester, a state could regulate abortion to protect the woman. After fetal

viability, the state had permission to regulate or prohibit abortion, except

when the mother’s health or life was endangered by her pregnancy. The

decision invalidated the Texas abortion statutes as well as those in other

states that limited women’s access to the procedure.

In a companion case, Doe v. Bolton, the Court struck down portions

of a Georgia law relating to the requirements that abortions must be per-

formed in accredited hospitals, that abortions must be approved by med-

ical committees, and that only residents of the state could obtain abor-

tions. The Court did not address the question of when life begins but did

note that the Fourteenth Amendment’s use of the word person does not

include the unborn.

See also Abortion; Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health; Beal v. Doe;

Bellotti v. Baird; Bray v. Alexandria Clinic; Colautti v. Franklin; Doe v. Bolton;

Harris v. McRae; Hodgson v. Minnesota; Ohio v. Akron Center; Planned Parent-

hood Association of Kansas City, Mo. v. Ashcroft; Planned Parenthood of Central

Missouri v. Danforth; Poelker v. Doe; Rust v. Sullivan; Thornburgh v. American

College of Obstetrics and Gynecology; Webster v. Reproductive Health Services;

Williams v. Zbaraz

References Harrison and Gilbert, eds., Abortion Decisions of the United States

Supreme Court: The 1970s (1993).

Rogers, Edith Frances Nourse (1881–1960)

Republican Edith Rogers of Massachusetts served in the U.S. House of

Representatives from 30 June 1925 to 10 September 1960. Rogers began her

582 Rogers, Edith Frances Nourse

public life through her husband John Rogers, who entered Congress in

1913. When he went to Britain and France on a congressional mission dur-

ing World War I, Edith Rogers accompanied him. In England, Edith Rogers

volunteered for the Young Men’s Christian Association, and in Europe she

went to battle zones as a member of a Red Cross party, visiting base and

field hospitals. When she returned to the United States, she worked seven

days a week at Walter Reed Hospital. In 1922, President Warren G. Hard-

ing appointed her a dollar-a-year veterans’ hospital inspector, an appoint-

ment renewed by Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.

In March 1925, John Rogers died in office following an operation. At

the requests of veterans, family members, and Republican leaders, Edith

Rogers, Edith Frances Nourse 583

Representative Edith

Nourse Rogers

(R-MA) served for

twenty-eight years in

Congress, 1953 (UPI/

Corbis)

Rogers became a candidate to fill the vacancy. Congresswoman Rogers

warned Americans about the threat that Hitler posed, argued for military

preparedness, and supported U.S. entry into World War II. In 1942, she

sponsored the legislation that created the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps

(WAACs), which eventually had 150,000 members, the legal limit. Later,

the word auxiliary was dropped, and the acronym became WAC.

Throughout her political career, Rogers served on the Veterans Af-

fairs Committee, chairing it in 1947. She once said that helping veterans

was her “greatest interest in life.” She cosponsored the GI Bill of Rights and

sponsored the Korean Veterans Benefits bill, as well as passing measures to

develop prosthetic appliances and appropriating funds for automobiles

for amputees. She was affectionately called the “mother of veterans.”

Rogers also supported legislation to protect her district’s textile and

shoe manufacturing and food processing industries. She advocated protec-

tive tariffs for cotton mill owners and benefits for laborers, again reflecting

issues important to her district. Rogers died two days before the 1960 Mas-

sachusetts primary, in which she was a candidate for a nineteenth term.

Born in Saco, Maine, Edith Rogers attended a finishing school near

Paris and traveled in Europe before marrying John Jacob Rogers in 1907.

See also Congress, Women in; Equal Rights Amendment

References Kaptur, Women of Congress: A Twentieth-Century Odyssey (1996).

Roosevelt, Eleanor (1884–1962)

First lady from 1933 to 1945, Eleanor Roosevelt established herself as a

leader in her own right and became one of the most beloved women in the

country. Shy and self-conscious as a child, she matured into a force on the

national and international stages, respected by heads of state and blue-

collar workers. Her tenure as first lady was unlike that of any first lady be-

fore or since.

Born in New York City, she was the daughter of socially prestigious

families on both her mother’s side and her father’s side. After her mother

died when Roosevelt was eight, her maternal grandmother raised her. Iso-

lated and lonely, tutored at home until she was fifteen years old, she found

companionship when she attended a private girls’ school in England for

three years. After returning to the United States, she taught at a settlement

house. She married her fifth cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1905 in

a ceremony officiated by her uncle, President Theodore Roosevelt. Over

the next eleven years, she bore six children, one of whom died in infancy,

and managed her household.

Franklin Roosevelt’s 1921 bout with poliomyelitis left him unable to

walk and led Eleanor Roosevelt to her reluctant involvement in politics.

584 Roosevelt, Eleanor

After a family friend told her that her husband needed politics to help him

recuperate, she became the means for his return to political life. She be-

came increasingly active in women’s activities in the Democratic Party and

at one time knew every Democratic Party county chairperson in New York.

When Franklin Roosevelt ran for governor of New York in 1928, she played

a pivotal role in gaining women’s support for his candidacy. She also

headed the women’s organization for Democratic presidential nominee Al

Smith’s candidacy and recruited Molly Dewson to work on the campaigns.

The two women worked together to reelect Franklin Roosevelt governor of

New York in 1930 and to elect him president in 1932. In the 1930s and

1940s, Eleanor Roosevelt played significant roles in expanding women’s

opportunities and enhancing women’s status in the Democratic Party.

After Franklin Roosevelt became president, Eleanor Roosevelt resigned

herself to a life limited to social activities, but she soon had a more diverse

schedule. Because of her husband’s limited mobility, she traveled in his

place and reported her observations to him. She called them “go-and-see

journeys” and went to places and events that no one from the White House

had ever visited. She went down into coal mines, visited the cardboard

shacks of people living in Oklahoma, walked along the irrigation ditches in

California, and traveled through the Dust Bowl. She visited wartime Great

Britain and Guadalcanal. She also reported her experiences through her

speeches and her writings, including a column entitled “My Day.”

Roosevelt, Eleanor 585

First Lady and

Ambassador Eleanor

Roosevelt dedicated

her life to the human

rights of all people

and helped pass the

United Nations

Universal Declaration

of Human Rights in

1948 (Courtesy: Corel

Corporation)

Eleanor Roosevelt was the first president’s wife to hold a press con-

ference. Limited to women reporters, Roosevelt used the forum to intro-

duce women in the administration to the public, to discuss the adminis-

tration’s programs, and to comment on the effect that the Depression and

later World War II had on women.

Her stands on civil rights attracted publicity, criticism, and goodwill.

When the Daughters of the American Revolution refused the use of Con-

stitution Hall to African American singer Marian Anderson in 1939, Roo-

sevelt resigned from the organization. The same year, she attended the

Southern Conference on Human Welfare meeting in Birmingham, Al-

abama. Resisting the South’s segregation policies, she placed her chair so

that half of it was on each side of the color line. During World War II,

Roosevelt was one of the few voices calling for the United States to assist

Jewish refugees.

After her husband died in 1945, President Harry Truman appointed

her to the U.S. delegation to the United Nations, the only woman in the

delegation. She chaired the preliminary Commission on Human Rights

in 1946 and was elected chair of the commission after it became perma-

nent in 1947. She shaped much of the Universal Declaration of Human

Rights that the UN General Assembly passed in 1948. When Truman left

office in 1953, she left the United Nations at the same time. President

John Kennedy reappointed her to the U.S. delegation to the United Na-

tions in 1961.

President John F. Kennedy appointed her chair of the President’s

Commission on the Status of Women in 1961. She died before the com-

mission completed its work.

See also Anderson, Marian; Democratic Party, Women in the; Dewson, Mary

(Molly) Williams; President’s Commission on the Status of Women

References Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, vol. 1: 1884–1933 (1992); Lash, Eleanor:

The Years Alone (1972); Roosevelt and Hickok, Ladies of Courage (1954).

Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana (b. 1952)

Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida entered the U.S. House of Rep-

resentatives on 29 August 1989. She is the first Hispanic woman and the

first Cuban American elected to Congress. The first Hispanic elected to

the Florida legislature, Ros-Lehtinen served in the Florida House of Rep-

resentatives from 1982 to 1986 and the Florida Senate from 1986 to 1989.

She played key roles in the passage of victim rights’ legislation, drug-free

workplace measures, and tuition assistance programs. She left the state

Senate after winning the special election to fill the vacancy created by the

death of incumbent Claude Pepper.

586 Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana

A conservative, Ros-Lehtinen op-

poses reproductive rights and supports a

constitutional amendment banning flag

desecration. She has, however, objected to

her party’s anti-immigrant stand and de-

fended immigrants, saying they have

“contributed greatly to all facets of life in

the economic, cultural, and political

fields.” A former Cuban refugee, Ros-

Lehtinen has called Fidel Castro an “inhu-

man tyrant” and has advocated policies to

end his leadership in Cuba and replace it

with a democracy. She has also taken

strong stands in support of Israel.

Born in Havana, Cuba, Ileana Ros-

Lehtinen fled with her parents to Miami

in 1960, a year after Fidel Castro’s revolu-

tion. She earned her associate of arts de-

gree from Miami-Dade Community College in 1972. She completed her

bachelor of arts degree in 1975 and master of science degree in 1986 from

Florida International University. A schoolteacher, Ros-Lehtinen is the

founder and former owner of a private elementary school.

See also Congress, Women in; State Legislatures, Women in

References Congressional Quarterly, Politics in America 1994 (1993), Politics

in America 1998 (1997); www.house.gov/ros-lehtinen/bio.htm.

Ross, Nellie Tayloe (1876–1977)

Democrat Nellie Tayloe Ross was the first woman governor in the United

States, serving from 1925 to 1927, and she was the first woman director of

the U.S. Mint. After her husband, Wyoming governor William Bradford

Ross, died in 1924 with two years left in his term, Nellie Tayloe Ross won

the special election to complete the term. As governor, she changed law

enforcement commissioners three times in attempts to place a person in

office who would enforce Prohibition laws. Protecting water for irrigation

was another priority, as was protecting bank deposits threatened by bank

closures. Ross ran for reelection in 1926 but lost.

In 1928, she became vice chair of the Democratic National Commit-

tee. For the next four years, she directed women’s activities within the

party. She also became a friend and colleague of Eleanor Roosevelt. When

Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for president, Ross directed women’s efforts

during his 1932 campaign.

Ross, Nellie Tayloe 587

Representative Ileana

Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL)

spoke on the floor

during the House

debate on the four

articles of impeach-

ment against Presi-

dent Bill Clinton

(Associated

Press/APTN)

Roosevelt named Ross director of the U.S. Mint in 1933. With the

first signs of economic recovery in the mid-1930s, demand for coins in-

creased steadily and with it the need for increased facilities, equipment,

and staff. Three new mints were constructed, and the number of person-

nel more than trebled. In addition, the U.S. Bullion Depository at Fort

Knox, Kentucky, the U.S. Bullion Depository at West Point, New York, the

Mint building in San Francisco, and the Denver Mint were constructed

during her tenure.

During World War II, metal shortages led to the use of substitute

metals for coins, including the steel penny, which looked so much like

dimes that Ross ended the use of them in 1943. She said: “That awful ‘war

penney’ almost ruined our reputation, but nobody disliked it more than

we did at the Mint.” Ross oversaw the development of the Roosevelt dime

and the replacement of the buffalo nickel with the Jefferson nickel.

Born in St. Joseph, Missouri, Ross obtained her education in private

schools in Omaha, Nebraska.