Rebecca Ann Felton (née Latimer; June 10, 1835 – January 24, 1930) was an American writer, lecturer,
feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
,
suffragist
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to v ...
,
reformer,
slave owner
The following is a list of slave owners, for which there is a consensus of historical evidence of slave ownership, in alphabetical order by last name.
A
* Adelicia Acklen (1817–1887), at one time the wealthiest woman in Tennessee, she inh ...
, and politician who was the first woman to serve in the
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States.
The composition and pow ...
, although she served for only one day.
[
Felton was the most prominent woman in ]Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States
Georgia may also refer to:
Places
Historical states and entities
* Related to the ...
in the Progressive Era
The Progressive Era (late 1890s – late 1910s) was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States focused on defeating corruption, monopoly, waste and inefficiency. The main themes ended during Am ...
, and was honored by appointment to the Senate. She was sworn in on November 21, 1922, and served just 24 hours. At 87 years, nine months, and 22 days old, she was the oldest freshman senator to enter the Senate. She was the only woman to have served as a senator from Georgia until the appointment of Kelly Loeffler
Kelly Lynn Loeffler (, ; born November 27, 1970) is an American businesswoman and politician who served as a United States senator for Georgia from 2020 to 2021. Loeffler was chief executive officer (CEO) of Bakkt, a subsidiary of commodity and ...
in 2020, nearly a hundred years later.
Her husband William Harrell Felton
William Harrell Felton (June 19, 1823 – September 24, 1909) was an American politician, army surgeon, and Methodist minister. Felton was elected to three terms of office to the United States House of Representatives as an Independent De ...
was a member of the United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the Lower house, lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the United States Senate, Senate being ...
and Georgia House of Representatives
The Georgia House of Representatives is the lower house of the Georgia General Assembly (the state legislature) of the U.S. state of Georgia. There are currently 180 elected members. Republicans have had a majority in the chamber since 2005. T ...
and she ran his campaigns. She was a prominent society woman who advocated for prison reform, women's suffrage
Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Beginning in the start of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to grant women the right to vot ...
, and educational modernization. Numan Bartley wrote that by 1915 she "was championing a lengthy feminist program that ranged from prohibition to equal pay for equal work
Equal pay for equal work is the concept of labour rights that individuals in the same workplace be given equal pay. It is most commonly used in the context of sexual discrimination, in relation to the gender pay gap. Equal pay relates to the full ...
yet never accomplished any feat because she held her role because of her husband."
She was also a white supremacist
White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other Race (human classification), races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any Power (social and polit ...
and Congress's last former slave owner
The following is a list of slave owners, for which there is a consensus of historical evidence of slave ownership, in alphabetical order by last name.
A
* Adelicia Acklen (1817–1887), at one time the wealthiest woman in Tennessee, she inh ...
, and spoke vigorously in favor of lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an ex ...
.
Early life
Felton was born in Decatur, Georgia
Decatur is a city in, and the county seat of, DeKalb County, Georgia, which is part of the Atlanta metropolitan area. With a population of 24,928 in the 2020 census, the municipality is sometimes assumed to be larger since multiple ZIP Codes in ...
, on June 10, 1835. She was the daughter of Charles Latimer, a prosperous planter, merchant, and general store owner. Charles was a Maryland native who moved to DeKalb County DeKalb County may refer to one of several counties in the United States, all of which were named for Baron Johan DeKalb:
* DeKalb County, Alabama
* DeKalb County, Georgia
* DeKalb County, Illinois
* DeKalb County, Indiana
* DeKalb County, Missour ...
in the 1820s, and his wife, Eleanor Swift Latimer, was from Morgan, Georgia
Morgan is a city in Calhoun County, Georgia, United States. The population was 1,741 at the 2020 census. The city is the county seat of Calhoun County.
History
Morgan was founded in 1854 as seat of the newly formed Calhoun County. It was incorp ...
. Felton was the oldest of four children; her sister, Mary Latimer, also became prominent in women's reforms in the early 20th century. When she was 15, her father sent her to live with close relatives in the town of Madison Madison may refer to:
People
* Madison (name), a given name and a surname
* James Madison (1751–1836), fourth president of the United States
Place names
* Madison, Wisconsin, the state capital of Wisconsin and the largest city known by this ...
where she attended a private school within a local Presbyterian church. She then went on to attend Madison Female College, from which she received a classical liberal arts education. She graduated at the top of her class at age 17 in 1852.
In October 1853, she married Dr. William Harrell Felton
William Harrell Felton (June 19, 1823 – September 24, 1909) was an American politician, army surgeon, and Methodist minister. Felton was elected to three terms of office to the United States House of Representatives as an Independent De ...
at her home and moved to live with him on his plantation just north of Cartersville, Georgia
Cartersville is a city in Bartow County, Georgia, United States; it is located within the northwest edge of the Atlanta metropolitan area. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 23,187. Cartersville is the county seat of Bartow Coun ...
. She gave birth to five children, one daughter and four sons. Only one, Howard Erwin Felton, survived childhood. In the aftermath of the Civil War, their plantation was destroyed. Because they were now unable to rely on slave labor as a means of producing income, Dr. Felton returned to farming as a way to earn income until there was enough money to open a school. Felton and her husband opened Felton Academy in Cartersville, where she and her husband both taught.
Women's suffrage
By joining the Woman's Christian Temperance Union
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is an international temperance organization, originating among women in the United States Prohibition movement. It was among the first organizations of women devoted to social reform with a program th ...
in 1886, Rebecca Latimer Felton was able to achieve stature as a speaker for equal rights for white women. Upon her entrance into the public realm independent of her husband's political career in the late 19th century, Felton attempted to employ middle-class men to help middle-class women achieve equal status in society. She believed that it was necessary for men to be held accountable, and during her 1887 address at the Women's Christian Temperance Union state convention, she argued that women were actively fulfilling their duties as wives and mothers, but men undervalued their importance. She argued that women should have more power inside of the home with more influence on the decision-making process, proper education should be provided for both wives and daughters, women should have economic independence through this education, training, and later employment and women should have more influence over the children. In 1898, Felton wrote "Textile Education for Georgia Girls" as an attempt to convince Georgia legislators that education for girls was necessary. In this article, she argued that it was a man's responsibility to take care of his wife and children. Therefore, it was his responsibility to ensure his daughter had equal rights and opportunities to his sons.
However, this strategy was not working and in 1900 Felton joined the women's suffrage movement. This move led her to work tirelessly for women's rights, including the right to vote, the progressive movement, free public education for women, and admittance into public universities. A prominent activist for women's suffrage
Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Beginning in the start of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to grant women the right to vot ...
in Georgia, Felton found many opponents in anti-suffragist Georgians such as Mildred Lewis Rutherford
Mildred Lewis "Miss Millie" Rutherford (July 16, 1851 – August 15, 1928) was a prominent white supremacist educator and author from Athens, Georgia. She served the Lucy Cobb Institute, as its head and in other capacities, for over forty years, ...
. During a 1915 debate with Rutherford and other anti-suffragists before the Georgia legislative committee, the chairman allowed each of the anti-suffragists to speak for 45 minutes but demanded Felton stop speaking after 30 minutes. Felton ignored him and spoke for an extra 15 minutes, at one point making fun of Rutherford and implicitly accusing her of hypocrisy. However, the Georgia legislative committee did not pass the suffrage bill. Georgia was later the first state to reject the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution when it was proposed in 1919, and unlike most other states in the Union, Georgia did not allow women to vote in the 1920 presidential election. Women in Georgia were not given the right to vote until 1922.
Felton criticized what she saw as the hypocrisy of Southern men who boasted of superior Southern "chivalry" but opposed women's rights, and she expressed her dislike of the fact that Southern states resisted white women's suffrage longer than other regions of the US. She wrote, in 1915, that women were denied fair political participation
except in the States which have been franchised by the good sense and common honesty of the men of those States—after due consideration, and with the chivalric instinct that differentiates the coarse brutal male from the gentlemen of our nation. Shall the men of the South be less generous, less chivalrous? They have given the Southern women more praise than the man of the West—but judged by their actions Southern men have been less sincere. Honeyed phrases are pleasant to listen to, but the sensible women of our country would prefer more substantial gifts. ...
Racial views
After she was married at age eighteen, Felton and her husband owned slaves before the Civil War
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
, and she was the last member of Congress to have been a slave owner.
Felton was a white supremacist
White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other Race (human classification), races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any Power (social and polit ...
. She claimed, for instance, that the more money that Georgia spent on black people's education, the more crimes black people committed. For the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition
The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordi ...
, she "proposed a southern exhibit 'illustrating the slave period,' with a cabin and 'real colored folks making mats, shuck collars, and baskets—a woman to spin and card cotton—and another to play banjo and show the actual life of heslave—not the ''Uncle Tom
Uncle Tom is the title character of Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel, ''Uncle Tom's Cabin''. The character was seen by many readers as a ground-breaking humanistic portrayal of a slave, one who uses nonresistance and gives his life to protect ...
'' sort.'" She wanted to display "the ignorant contented darky—as distinguished from Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe (; June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American author and abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and became best known for her novel ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (1852), which depicts the harsh ...
's monstrosities."
Felton considered "young blacks" who sought equal treatment "half-civilized gorillas", and ascribed to them a "brutal lust" for white women. While seeking suffrage for women, she decried voting rights for black people, arguing that it led directly to the rape of white women.
Felton also advocated more lynchings of black men, saying that such was "elysian
Elysium (, ), otherwise known as the Elysian Fields ( grc, Ἠλύσιον πεδίον, ''Ēlýsion pedíon'') or Elysian Plains, is a conception of the afterlife that developed over time and was maintained by some Greek religious and philos ...
" compared to the rape of white women. On August 11, 1898, Felton gave a speech in Tybee, Georgia, to several hundred members of the Georgia State Agricultural Society. She urged an increase in lynchings in order to protect rural white women from being raped by black men.
Newspapers reprinted[ a transcript of Felton's speech to garner support for the Democratic Party. On August 18, 1898, Alex Manly's ''Daily Record'' printed a rebuttal editorial][ arguing that white rape of black women was much more frequent, and contact between white women and black men was often consensual. Manly's editorial was used][ as a pretext for the Wilmington Insurrection of November 1898.
Manly was interviewed by the ''Baltimore Sun'' three days after the massacre, and he stated that he only had wished to defend "defamed colored men" libeled by Felton. He said that his editorial had been distorted by white newspapers. Felton's response appeared in the November 16 issue of the Raleigh ''News and Observer'': "When the negro Manly attributed the crime to intimacy between negro men and white women of the South the slanderer should be made to fear a lyncher's rope rather than occupy a place in New York newspapers."
In 1899, a massive crowd of white Georgians arrested, tortured, and lynched a black man, ]Sam Hose
Sam Hose (born Samuel Thomas Wilkes; c. 1875 – April 23, 1899) was an African American man who was tortured and murdered by a white lynch mob in Coweta County, Georgia, after being falsely accused of rape by the mob.
Personal life ...
, who had been falsely accused of murdering a white man and raping his victim's wife. Felton said that any "true-hearted husband or father" would have killed "the beast" and that Hose was due less sympathy than a rabid dog.
Day as a senator
Thomas W. Hardwick, the Governor of Georgia
The governor of Georgia is the head of government of Georgia and the commander-in-chief of the state's military forces. The governor also has a duty to enforce state laws, the power to either veto or approve bills passed by the Georgia Legisl ...
, was planning to run as a candidate in the next election to the US Senate, which was due in 1924. However, the current incumbent Senator Thomas E. Watson
Thomas Edward Watson (September 5, 1856 – September 26, 1922) was an American politician, attorney, newspaper editor and writer from Georgia. In the 1890s Watson championed poor farmers as a leader of the Populist Party, articulating an a ...
died unexpectedly on September 26, 1922. As Governor, Hardwick was entitled to appoint a replacement for Watson until a special election
A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-larges ...
could be arranged. Hardwick sought an appointee who would not be a competitor in the coming election, and to ingratiate himself with the new women voters (who had been alienated by Hardwick's opposition to the 19th Amendment). On October 3, Hardwick therefore selected Felton to serve as senator, because she was a well-known and respected representative of the suffrage movement. Congress was not expected to reconvene until after the special election, which was scheduled for November 7, so it was considered unlikely that Felton would ever be sworn in. Walter F. George
Walter Franklin George (January 29, 1878 – August 4, 1957) was an American politician from the state of Georgia. He was a longtime Democratic United States Senator from 1922 to 1957 and was President pro tempore of the United States Sen ...
defeated Hardwick by 55% to 33% in the Democratic Party primary, and was elected unopposed in the special election. Rather than take his seat immediately when the Senate reconvened on November 21, George allowed Felton to be sworn in.[ This was due in part to persuasion by Felton] and a supportive campaign launched by the white women of Georgia. George benefited from the gesture, by presenting himself as a friend of the suffrage movement. Felton thus became the first female senator, serving until George took office one day later.
Final years
Felton was interviewed on film in 1929, discussing her political accomplishments and her memories of witnessing part of the Trail of Tears
The Trail of Tears was an ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of approximately 60,000 people of the "Five Civilized Tribes" between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government. As part of the Indian removal, members of the Cherokee, ...
around the year 1838. Felton continued to write and lecture until her final days, finishing her book, ''The Romantic Story of Georgia's Women'', shortly before her death in Atlanta in 1930. Her remains were interred in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Cartersville.
Notable writings
*"The Country Home" (1898–1920) – recurring article within the ''Atlanta Journal''
''My Memoirs of Georgia Politics''
(1911)
''Country Life in Georgia in the Days of my Youth''
(1919)
*''The Romantic Story of Georgia's Women'' (1930)
See also
*Women in the United States Senate
This article covers the history of women in the United States Senate and various milestones achieved by female senators. It includes a list of all women who have served in the Senate, a list of current female senators, and a list of states repre ...
Notes
References
*
*
* Talmage, John E. ''Rebecca Latimer Felton: Nine Stormy Decades'' (1960)
* Talmage, John E. "Felton, Rebecca Ann Latimer" in Edward T. James, ed., ''Notable American Women: A biographical dictionary'' (1971) 1:606-7
Works cited
*
*
External links
*
*
Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835–1930)
New Georgia Encyclopedia.
* U.S. Senate
Retrieved March 1, 2005.
Uncorrected transcript of interview
with Richard Baker, Senate Historian, on C-SPAN
Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN ) is an American cable and satellite television network that was created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises many proceedings of the United States ...
Q&A television program, June 12, 2005
Photograph of Rebecca Latimer Felton in 1927
Vanishing Georgia Collection.
*
Felton Home
historical marker
Rebecca Latimer Felton
historical marker
Video interview with Rebecca Latimer Felton in 1929
, -
{{DEFAULTSORT:Felton, Rebecca Latimer
1835 births
1930 deaths
20th-century American writers
20th-century American women writers
American feminists
American proslavery activists
American suffragists
American temperance activists
Burials in Georgia (U.S. state)
Democratic Party United States senators from Georgia (U.S. state)
Female United States senators
Georgia (U.S. state) Democrats
People from Decatur, Georgia
American slave owners
American white supremacists
Women in Georgia (U.S. state) politics
Writers from Georgia (U.S. state)
American women slave owners
United States senators who owned slaves
Wikipedia articles incorporating text from A Woman of the Century