Ohio has been called “the mother of Presidents,” with eight chief executives calling it home.
In 1872, Ohioan Victoria Woodhull became the first woman to run for president – an election won by fellow Buckeye Ulysses S. Grant. A new documentary, premiering Sunday at the Lorain Historical Society, explores Woodhull’s life.
“Everything about her was definitely audacious,” said Bette Lou Higgins, producer of "Victoria Woodhull: Shattering Glass Ceilings.” “She was open-minded, open speaking. She wanted equal rights for everybody. She wanted access to health care for everyone. She wanted all citizens to be able to vote. She wanted sex education in the classroom.”
Higgins and her team at Elyria-based Eden Valley Enterprises produce historical programs and films, such as 2016’s “Trail Magic: The Grandma Gatewood Story,” nominated for a regional Emmy. She was planning the Woodhull project, again working with writer Kelly Boyer Sagert and director Peter Huston, when work was halted by the pandemic. The film was eventually finished, and a premiere set, just days before Vice President Kamala Harris moved to the top of the Democratic ticket.
“When we started this, the goal was to finish it in 2020 for the anniversary of the Suffrage Act, which obviously we missed,” she said. “Who would have thought that there would be a woman running for president now that we are actually done?”
Higgins was partly inspired to focus on Woodhull after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential run. Yet she’s been a fan since first hearing Woodhull’s story in the mid-‘70s.
The story from Homer
Victoria Woodhull was born in 1838 in Homer, Ohio, about midway between Mansfield and Columbus.
“As an Ohioan, I hope a lot of the Ohioans who don't know about her find something else to brag about for Ohio,” Higgins said. “I also hope that it opens people’s eyes to so much of the interesting parts of history that so many of us don't know about.”
In the film, Kate Luke plays the adult Woodhull, who couldn’t have voted for herself in 1872: Women’s suffrage was decades away. She was also in jail on Election Day, charged with obscenity for publishing information about an allegedly adulterous pastor. Even if elected, she was only 34, a year too young to serve. She ran anyway to advance her ideas of labor reform, women’s rights, free love and caring for the developmentally disabled. She even selected Frederick Douglass as her running mate.
“Everything that she did was so far ahead of her time, but it opened a lot of eyes,” Higgins said. “Even President Grant, when she was running against him, admitted that of course she wasn't going win, but it brought those topics to the forefront.”
The film closes with a nod to the present, using an excerpt from a speech by Kamala Harris. Yet Higgins is careful to point out that the film and her team are making no endorsements in this year’s presidential race.
“When she was elected to, or became, vice president, her speech was about how she stood on the shoulders of all the women who came before her,” Higgins said. “Surely, one of those shoulders was Victoria Woodhull’s.”
