GGRWHC Salutes Hamilton! 

We honor the memory of Grand Rapids' Eva McCall Hamilton, who on October 18, 2012, was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame. The GGRWHC co-sponsored the nomination with Capitol historian Kerry Chartkoff, who will visit Grand Rapids in January.

Immediately following passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, Hamilton won the 16th District senate seat from Kent County, making her the first woman ever elected to the Michigan legislature. Both before and after her victory in the first general election in which women could vote, she was active in civic affairs: in the fights for women's suffrage, to establish farmers' markets, to increase teachers' pay and funds for destitute mothers, to establish a peace party during wartime and to get out the vote afterward.

Such varied civic involvements won her the Republican nomination for the State Senate in 1920, a contest she won handily over three male opponents. Senator Hamilton served only a single term, but she introduced a dozen innovative measures and more than half passed.

On the 25th anniversary of her historic election, she was honored with a special Senate tribute before a gallery packed with women from all over the state; and in 1949, a year after her death, her portrait became the first of a woman ever displayed in the Michigan State Capitol.

Holding the reins for the Grand Rapids Equal Suffrage Club, Eva McCall Hamilton guides the "Lilly Float for Suffragists" and 75 club members in automobiles past 75,000 spectators at the Founding Day Parade in August, 1910, in one of the nation's earliest suffrage demonstrations.
 

One hundred years ago, Governor Charles Osborn lauded Eva McCall Hamilton, saying "no one has done better work" for suffrage. Shown here, she is at the center of the state mail office in Grand Rapids during the major referendum work of 1912. Hamilton was the chair for advertising in an office that handled six tons of literature during the campaign.