Josephus Daniels Predicted a Female Governor in 1922

When he addressed the young women of Carolina College at Maxton, Josephus Daniels said he expected to live to see a woman elected governor. Daniels died in 1948. Beverly Perdue, North Carolina’s first female governor, was elected in 2008. The following is a story originally printed in The Landmark, was reprinted by the Watauga Democrat on June 8, 1922.

Declaring that he expected to live to see a woman elected Governor and make a better job of it than that some of the men have made, Mr. Josephus Daniels, talking to the young women of Carolina College at Maxton, also remarked: “Whenever a man is named as a candidate for any political office, by whatever party, if his private life is unclean I want the time to come when he will be immediately blackballed at the polls by the women voters of the country.”

Fine! We all applaud. But while we are hoping the women will do just that, we are at the same time hoping that they won’t stop to ask why the men haven’t done the same all this while instead of waiting on the women to get the ballot.

If the sisters get to talking that way, they may say some disagreeable things about the mere males who have made a pass at governing the country since the beginning and have lacked the courage to demand that all men in public life walk straight and keep clean. On the contrary, they repeatedly elect men to office whose lives are unclean; sometimes men who are little if any better than crooks, and know they are that sort when they are elected. It’s an awful confession the men make when they call the women to do for the country what they know should be done, that which is an urgent need, which they could and can do but lack the courage to do. --Landmark