Her Legacy: Eva McCall Hamilton

Eva McCall Hamilton, Centennial Senator

ARTICLE BY: JAYSON OTTO, FOR THE GREATER GRAND RAPIDS WOMEN’S HISTORY COUNCIL ILLUSTRATION BY KIM NGUYEN HEADER ILLUSTRATION BY LIBBY VANDERPLOEG

WOMEN WHO RAN!

Eva McCall Hamilton took her senate seat in January 1921! Read more about her on our new web page--Women Who Ran-and place her among 46 other Grand Rapids women who ran 82 campaigns for public offi ce between 1887 and 1920. Not only will you fi nd more detail and documentation about Hamilton, you will discover four other women who also ran for state offi ces, including the State Superintendent of Public Instruction and the UM Board of Regents. Three women even ran for national positions, although most campaigns were local. You can sort alphabetically, chronologically, by political offi ce, occupation, marital status, reform activity, and party affi liation. Learn that there were political parties other than the usual. Have you ever heard of a Farmer-Labor Party in Grand Rapids? Visit ggrwhc.org! In 1920, Eva McCall Hamilton persuaded Grand Rapids to elect her as their senator in the Michigan legislature. at she was seated in January 1921 after the rst election when women could compete for the o ce, thirty years before another Michigan woman would win a seat in the senate and a century before a Grand Rapids woman would, testi es to her political acumen. How did Hamilton pull this o ?

Recently, Eva McCall Hamilton had deftly maneuvered the social and political landscapes of Grand Rapids. Su ragists had certainly used creative modern tactics during their nal push, but they also recognized that the radical strategies of England’s extremist su ragettes would not work in Grand Rapids. One 1911 news article explicitly distinguished between those“wildeyed” su ragettes in “freakish clothes” and the “home and mother”-type of women pushing for the vote in Michigan. Hamilton did embrace her role as a protector of the home, but she also insisted that women could manage domestic life properly only with “a chance to participate in the public enterprises which a ect the home so intimately.”

An inaugural member of the 1910 Grand Rapids Equal Franchise Club, Hamilton and other women “elbowed their way” into Lansing’s legislative halls. After the failure disappointed her early followers.

of a 1912 women’s su rage referendum and when one newspaper called Hamilton a “su ragette,” she red back about the hypocrisy of legislators who had pledged their votes and then “turned tail.” She promised that in two years she would “get on the stump” and “tell the people of their districts just what kind of men” they were. And she did.

is non-“su ragette” wasn’t afraid to throw words! And she wasn’t afraid to throw herself into an education or later passionate engagements in civic life and politics. Two years at the Ferris Institute, a pioneer school in the emerging eld of physical culture, led to Hamilton’s promotion of athletics for girls; and her courses in banking and business helped in ghts for fair property rights for married women, the protection of vulnerable widows and retired schoolteachers, and for fresh food at a ordable prices. Appointed by the mayor to the High Cost of Living Commission in 1917, Hamilton helped to establish farmers’ markets in Grand Rapids, gained a reputation as a powerful speaker, and su ered derogatory Hamilton built on her extensive civic work in her campaign for the state senate. And, once seated in Lansing, she continued to promote herself staunchly as a woman rst. While her fellow male senators appreciated this, some of her early supporters did not. Hamilton was defeated after only one term; and one reporter suggested that her moderate political stances in Lansing had

remarks from the aldermen she had “whipped.”

During Hamilton’s one term as a senator, however, she saw through about fteen bills and made good use of those courses in banking to promote “modern business methods in every department of the State Government” and to increase teachers’ salaries through increased local taxes. For the rest of her life, this trail blazer continued ghting for child labor laws and mother’s pensions and worked with the League of Women Voters.

Watch for more centennials in the wake of the of the Nineteenth Amendment! On our website’s new page, Women Who Ran, the GGRWHC turns to the history of Grand Rapids women running for electoral o ce. Follow them--and us--on Facebook and in WLM, and sign up for our hard copy and electronic newsletters at ggrwhc.org!

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