This biography of the first woman to be elected to Congress from
the state of Georgia is more than the story of one woman's
challenge of the political establishment. It also covers
professional women in the modern South, southern liberalism in the
New Deal era and beyond, and the gathering forces of racial change
in the era immediately preceding the civil rights movement.
A courageous and high-spirited woman, Helen Douglas Mankin drove
an ambulance in France in 1918, made a daring cross-country
motor-car tour with her sister in 1922, and was one of the first
women to practice law before the state bar. Her political career
began in 1936, when she was elected to the state legislature from
Atlanta. During her four terms in office she worked for progressive
legislation in the areas of child welfare, education, electoral
reform, and women's rights. In 1946 when a special election was
called to fill the unexpired term of Fifth District Congressman
Robert Ramspeck, Helen Mankin left the legislature to seek the
office. Of the seventeen candidates in the race, only Mankin
actively sought the support of the black community, and she won the
seat by a margin smaller than her vote in the heavily black Ashby
Street precinct of Atlanta. Talmadge dubbed her "the Belle of Ashby
Street" and belittled "the spectacle of Atlanta Negroes sending a
Congresswoman to Washington."
She was renominated in the no longer all-white Democratic
primary of July 1946, winning more popular votes than her nearest
opponent, but the entrenched political forces in the state unified
to orchestrate her defeat and her opponent claimed victory.
Although her tenure in Congress was brief and she never again held
office, her legacy is one of courage and conviction in an era that
saw many changes in the South and the nation.
General
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