S1 • E22 Jul 29, 2020 12m
Martha Hughes Cannon (1857-1932) came from a Welsh-born immigrant family that traveled West with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to settle in Utah in 1860. After obtaining a medical degree and working as a physician, she became the fourth of six wives in a polygamous Mormon marriage. During the height of a national crackdown on polygamy, she was forced to flee with her first child to England on the 'Mormon Underground' to avoid court testimony against her husband and other Mormon fathers. In 1888, she established the first nurse's training school in Utah. In 1896, Cannon was elected the country's first female state senator, defeating her own husband who was also on the ballot. A leader in Utah's women's suffrage movement, she helped put women's suffrage into the state's constitution, established Utah's first board of health and a school for the deaf and blind. Interviewees: Jenny Reeder, women's history specialist at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' Church History Department; and former U.S. Representative for Utah's 4th congressional district, Mia B. Love, the first Black female Republican elected to Congress, and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
