carol queen

One of the sexiest, most powerful, progressive, open-minded and inspirational characters in American history was a freethinking businesswoman named Victoria Claflin Woodhull. Newspaper publisher extraordinaire, mediumistic hypnotherapist and fearless advocate of “Free Love,” an important precursor to the feminist and sexual revolutions, as well as ethical hedonism, Woodhull was also America’s first lady broker on Wall Street (along with her sister Tennessee Claflin, mistress to Cornelius Vanderbilt). And in 1872, the first female U.S. Presidential candidate, before women even had the right to vote.

Woodhull’s independent thinking, dazzling personal success, journalistic “outings” of powerful sexual hypocrites like the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher and open advocacy of sexual freedom earned her multiple enemies in both conservative America and the sex-averse suffragist movement. Some of Woodhull’s stronger enemies managed to squelch her once-powerful voice in her own lifetime, as well as in the history books. Over the course of the 20th century, Woodhull was almost forgotten. American schoolbooks don’t tend to mention her along with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, though Woodhull was at least as important a figure in the history of women’s rights.