1928 - Caroline League for City Council

WOMEN’S CANDIDATE FOR VILLAGE BOARD

Thirty-nine year old Caroline League, a long time Lombard resident, was active in several civic organizations, married and the mother of three children, when she ran for Village Trustee in 1928. She suffered a huge defeat.

This dismissive statement in the Lombard Spectator may have had a chilling effect on the outcome of the election for her:

 “A new party has been born in Lombard - the Woman’s party. Yet not a party in the ordinary political sense. Just a laughing, non-partisan group of hurriedly summoned women met in a Lombard living room and laughingly, happily-and quite seriously too – selected a woman candidate to represent their small mother-needs in the coming council election.

They have no partisan platform, no slogan, no election song or expenses. And they ask a very small thing. Only this: That one place on the town board be given to a woman so that women citizens of Lombard would feel more at home in their town, and could bring their small problems to the board with no feeling of embarrassment.”
Lombard Spectator; Mar 29, 1928

There is no evidence that Caroline ever ran again for public office although she lived in Lombard for the rest of her life and passed away at age 86. A member of the Lombard Historical staff interviewed Caroline in 1974, and she did not mention ever running for office. An interesting fact about the League’s family home on Maple Street is that it was moved to Finley and Charles Lane to make way for Sacred Heart Catholic Church.

TO THE VOTERS OF LOMBARD

“Most men realize and are willing to give women their rightful share in deciding important matters but to him who jeers there is only one answer Why do you advertise the poor opinion you have of your wife and mother?”
Lombard Spectator; Mar 29, 1928

It took quite a while, but finally in 1960 the first woman trustee was elected in Lombard, Margaret King. Ms. King served for only one year, but she certainly opened the door for the next successful woman candidate, Marilyn E. Meyer, who served for thirteen years from 1961 – 1977.

THE VILLAGE OF LOMBARD BEHIND THE NATION IN THE ELECTION OF WOMEN TO PUBLIC OFFICE

In 1888, a year after Kansas woman could vote in municipal elections, Oskaloosa, Kansas became the first town in the United States known to have an all-woman government, with the mayor and entire council being female.

Why the derision of women in Lombard but not in Oskaloosa, Kansas? Apparently, the menfolk of Oskaloosa suggested, in jest, that an all women government of the city would result in a vast improvement in the running of affairs to the status quo of all men...and they were right. The women accomplished a great deal in their first and second terms in office, far more than their male predecessors, including new sidewalks, graded streets, streetlamps and a number of social reforms - all successfully accomplished with the gentleness of the feminine touch. They declined to run for a third term.