About Rebecca Latimer Felton
Rebecca Ann Felton (née Latimer; June 10, 1835 – January 24, 1930) was an American writer, politician, feminist, white supremacist, and slave owner who was the first woman to serve in the United States Senate, serving for only one day. Felton was a prominent member of the Georgia upper class who advocated for white supremacy, prison reform, women's suffrage and education reform. Her husband, William Harrell Felton, served in both the United States House of Representatives and the Georgia House of Representatives, and she helped organize his political campaigns. She spoke vigorously in favor of lynching African Americans, stating the belief that such acts would protect the sexual purity of European-American women. A major figure in American first-wave feminism, historian Numan Bartley wrote that by 1915 Felton "was championing a lengthy feminist program that ranged from prohibition to equal pay for equal work." The most prominent woman in the state of Georgia during the Progressive Era, she was honored near the end of her life by a symbolic one-day appointment to the Senate. Felton was sworn in on November 21, 1922, and served just 24 hours. At the age of 87, she was the oldest freshman senator to enter the Senate. Felton was the last person to serve in the Senate to have owned slaves in her lifetime. Felton was the only woman to have served as a senator from Georgia until the appointment of Kelly Loeffler in 2020, nearly 100 years later. Rebecca Ann Felton (née Latimer; June 10, 1835 – January 24, 1930) was an American writer, politician, white supremacist, and slave owner who was the first woman to serve in the United States Senate, serving for only one day. 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.
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