Missouri

Missouri was among the Midwestern states that elected two women to its legislature in 1922, the first realistic opportunity.

Mellcene Thurman Smith Missouri Women's Council.

Sarah Lucille Turner Missouri Women's Council.

Catherine Hanaway Catholic University of America, Columbus.

Maida Coleman Missouri Women's Council.

Mellcene Thurman Smith (c. 1872-1957)

    Mellcene Thurman was born in Missouri to John and Cecelia Thurman. It is believed that she was born in 1872, although she concealed her age. She attended various schools in St. Joseph and Kansas City and was interested in a musical career. After marrying Edward T. Smith and moving to Kansas City, Missouri, she worked for the Havens Structural Steel Company during the day and studied law at the Kansas City School of Law at night. Her hard work paid off when she was awarded her J.D. in 1922 – only a few months prior to her election to the legislature.

    A law class debate on women’s fitness to hold office had such a powerful effect that she ran for the Missouri House, and with support from friends in the new League of Women Voters, she won.  A Democrat from St. Louis County, Smith said at the time of her election:  “I do not intend to drape my feet over the top of a desk in the Capitol building. And I am determined not to spatter the walls of the place with tobacco juice.” Her husband was not impressed with the Jefferson City capitol:  when he visited her there, he declared, “And this is what you left your home for?”

    During her one term in office, Smith sponsored bills to license boarding houses, ban child labor and make school attendance mandatory, and increase funds for women’s prisons.  Probably too liberal for her time, she lost her 1924 re-election bid. She returned to her social causes, which varied from the Church Peace Union to the Daughters of the American Revolution and Sunday-school teaching. Mellcene Thurman Smith died on June 21, 1957 at the age of 85.

Sarah Lucille Turner (1898-1972)

    Sarah Lucille Turner was born on March 28, 1898 in Centralia, Illinois. Her family moved to Kansas City, Missouri when she was ten. She graduated from Northeast High School with honors in 1915 and Kansas City Law School in 1922. She took a job with the Hagerman & Jost Law offices and like Mellcene Smith, was elected to the legislature just a few months after law school graduation.

    A Democrat like Smith, Turner differed in being unmarried.  She was the youngest legislator and also set a state precedent by being the first woman to preside over the Missouri House, on March 16, 1923.  She was assigned to significant committees, including Civil and Criminal Procedure, Constitution Amendments and Criminal Jurisprudence, and chaired the Children’s Code Committee.

    Also like Smith, Turner lost her 1924 re-election bid. She moved to New York and then to Washington, D.C. In 1932, she married Walter C. Jepson, a real estate agent and Air Force veteran. She worked as the secretary for the publisher of Newsweek and rose to personnel manager, a position she held until she retired at 65.  She and her husband moved to North Carolina, where Turner died on April 12, 1972 – a half-century and far away from her experience as a Missouri legislator.  

Catherine Hanaway (1963-)
Nominated by NFWL

    Catherine Hanaway first became interested in politics, while in high school, during the 1980 presidential race, when she worked to support former President Bush in the Iowa caucuses. While in school, she worked on many Republican campaigns, where she began the process of “[developing] ties at the very top of the GOP.” Later, she studied at the University of Missouri at Columbia, where she became interested in student government. She retained this interest after she transferred to Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, where she was the second woman to lead the student government. After studying securities law at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., she returned to St. Louis to work.

    By 1998 she had won a seat in the Missouri House, where she won respect for her willingness to listen, despite her reputation for toughness. In 2003 she was elected the first female Speaker of the Missouri House and in 2005 was appointed the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. She was officially sworn in on April 24, 2006 and quickly identified anti-terrorism, methamphetamine, child pornography, guns/Project Safe Neighborhoods, and white collar crime/public corruption as her priorities while in office.

Maida Coleman (1954-)
Nominated by NFWL

    Born in Sikeston, Missouri on July 1, 1954, Maida Coleman is the Assistant Floor Minority Leader of the Missouri Senate and represents District 5. She became interested in politics following a conversation with Ronnie White, a Missouri Supreme Court Judge, in the late 1980s, but she would not hold office for the first time until 2000.

    Prior to working in politics, Maida pursued an interest in journalism. She received a B.A. in journalism from Lincoln University in Jefferson City before moving to St. Louis to work for the St. Louis American Newspaper.

    In 2000, Maida won a seat in the Missouri House of Representatives, serving there for one year before she was elected to the Senate, after the unexpected death of Senator Paula J. Carter. In 2002, she was elected on her own merits to the Senate and later in the year became the Assistant Minority Floor Leader. During her tenure she has helped pass election reform and championed a bill that raised pay and increased vacation time of police officers in St. Louis.

    Outside of her experience in the Missouri Legislature, Madia is Vice-Chairman of the St. Louis City Democratic Central Committee and a member of the Central Baptist Church.