honeyspider:

Victoria Claflin Woodhull (September 23, 1838 – June 9, 1927) was an American leader of the woman’s suffrage movement.

Woodhull was an advocate of free love, by which she meant the freedom to marry, divorce, and bear children without government interference. She was the first woman to start a weekly newspaper; an activist for women’s rights and labor reforms.

At her peak of political activity in the early 1870s, Woodhull is best known as the first woman candidate for the United States presidency, which she ran for in 1872 from the Equal Rights Party, supporting women’s suffrage and equal rights. Her arrest on obscenity charges a few days before the election, for publishing an account of the alleged adulterous affair between the prominent minister, Henry Ward Beecher, and Elizabeth Tilton, added to the sensational coverage of her candidacy. She did not receive any electoral votes, and there is conflicting evidence about popular votes.

Many of the reforms and ideals which Woodhull espoused for the working class, against what she saw as the corrupt capitalist elite, were extremely controversial in her time. Generations later many of these reforms have been implemented and are now taken for granted. Other of her ideas and suggested reforms are still debated today.

(via manticoreimaginary)