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First Female Candidate for US President Ran in 1872


Victoria Claflin Woodhull, shown in this undated file photo, was the first woman to run for president.
Victoria Claflin Woodhull, shown in this undated file photo, was the first woman to run for president.

Hillary Clinton is the first woman named as a major party's nominee for president, but she is far from the first woman to run for the nation's highest office. That distinction goes to Victoria Claflin Woodhull.

-Ran in the 1872 election as the Equal Rights Party nominee

-Abolitionist Frederick Douglass was chosen as her running mate, but he never acknowledged the campaign

-Promoted allowing women to vote (they could not yet under the Constitution) as well as reforms for workers

-Could not legally allowed to vote for herself, and at 34 years old would have been a year shy of being eligible for the presidency

-Backed by financier Cornelius Vanderbilt, she and her sister opened the first Wall Street brokerage firm run by women

-Died in England in 1927, about seven years after women in the U.S. gained the right to vote

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