Margaret
Madeline Chase Smith (December 14, 1897 – May 29, 1995)[1] was
the first woman Senator and Congresswoman (Maine) in 1948.
Margaret
Madeline Chase Smith (December 14, 1897 – May 29, 1995)[1] was
the first woman Senator and Congresswoman (Maine) in 1948.
She was an American politician. A member of the Republican Party, she served as a U.S Representative (1940–49) and a U.S. Senator (1949–73) from Maine.[2] She was the first woman to serve in both houses of the United States Congress, and the first woman to represent Maine in either.[3] A moderate Republican, she was among the first to criticize the tactics of McCarthyism in her 1950 speech, "Declaration of Conscience".[4] Smith was a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 1964 presidential election; she was the first woman to be placed in nomination for the presidency at a major party's convention.[2] Upon leaving office, she was the longest-serving female Senator in history, a distinction that was not surpassed until January 5, 2011, when Senator Barbara Mikulski was sworn in for a fifth term.[5] To date, Smith is ranked as the longest-serving Republican woman in the Senate.[6]
Following her departure from the Senate, Smith taught at several colleges and universities as a visiting professor for the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (1973–1976).[3] She resumed her residence in Skowhegan, where she oversaw the construction of a library to hold her papers.[11] She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George H. W. Bush on July 6, 1989.[2] At age 97, Smith died in her native Skowhegan in 1995, after suffering a stroke eight days earlier that had left her in a coma.[12] She was cremated, and her ashes were placed in the residential wing of the Margaret Chase Smith Library in Skowhegan.[2] She was the last living U.S. Senator who had been born in the 19th century.
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