Susanna Salter — Not The Butt of The Joke
My Dearest Reader,
What a day! All over the United States people are coming together to celebrate motherhood the best way they know how: by buying flowers and going to brunch. In the interest of time, and not at all because it is past 7 p.m. on Saturday and I am just getting started, I will keep todays intro short so we can all mosey on down to our french toast and bottomless mimosas.
It was the year 1887 in Argonia, Kansas when a group of anti-prohibitionist men had a great idea for a joke. You see, women had just been granted the right to vote in Kansas and the members of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), who previously had no say in the lawmaking process, had called a caucus to choose some prohibitionist men to run for office.
Our jokesters, who were nicknamed “wet” because … well they enjoyed a drink or five, were in attendance but were feeling a little down. They had gone into the meeting with a plan. They had mocked and heckled the women; they had even tried to intimidate them into choosing non-prohibitionist candidates but their efforts were wasted. Those women were not backing down. So they came up with a devious plan, and called a secret caucus of their own.
Back in 1877, election ballots were not pre-printed and people didn’t register to vote. Each party drew up their own ballots with their preferred candidates and distributed them amongst the people to drop into the ballot box. So our “wet” friends set out to copy WCTU’s ballot format with one small tweak: they substituted the name of the mayoral candidate with Mrs. Susanna Salter — a 27 year old activist and enthusiastic member of the WCTU.
To them, the idea of a female mayor was so outrageous that only true extremists would vote for it. So, with one swift cruel joke they would both expose the WCTU as an idiotic minority and teach Mrs. Salter a lesson in keeping her strong views to herself. Ingenious!
Come election day, everything was going as planned. Confusion ensued as people saw the ballots. The WCTU sent a delegation to the Salter home. They arrived as Susanna was hanging the laundry, explained the situation, and offered her the opportunity to remove her name from the ballot.
But Susanna was not about to be the butt of a bad joke made by a few sexist men who fancied themselves comedians after one mediocre attempt at an all-mens open mic night. No; she decided to keep her name on the ballot and run for Mayor.
Empowered by her stance against low-level comedy and sabotage, the WCTU came out in support of Susanna and members poured out to vote for her. At the end of the day, as the ballots were being counted there was one clear winner with over 60% of the votes: Susanna Salter.
Yes, while our hilarious wet friends had set out to humiliate the WCTU, they had ironically helped elect the first female mayor in the United States. Ingenious!
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