Hattie Caraway
The Arkansas Democrat was appointed to the U.S. Senate in 1931 to fill the vacancy caused by the death of her husband Thaddeus Caraway. She was the second woman to serve in the Senate, after Rebecca Latimer Felton (D-GA_ in 1922, but became the first woman elected to the upper house of Congress in 1932. She won a second term in 1938 and served until 1945. The press labelled her "Silent Hattie" because she didn't often speak on the Senate floor, but Caraway would become the first woman to chair a Senate committee, in 1933, and the first woman to preside over the chamber, in 1943.
