Nov. 7, 1922: Two women are first elected to the Missouri House
On Nov. 7, 1922, two women were elected to the Missouri House; the first women to hold House seats in the state.
Mellcene Thurman Smith was elected to a district in University City as a Democrat (an upset at the time).
A Kansas City district elected Sarah L. Turner. Thanks to the alphabetical order of the oaths, Smith was inducted into office first (at least, in her telling). She passed six bills during her first and only legislative session.
Marguerite Martyn, a woman journalist with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, wrote in May 1923: "Mrs. Smith is the greatest upsetter we've ever had of the theory that a woman has to neglect the finer, daintier of feminine arts and graces in order to be a shrewd politician and an honest and earnest worker for the public weal. She is just bubbling over with amusing anecdotes based on personal contacts and observations at Jefferson City, most of which are only for intimate groups, through there are some with which she regales semi-public gatherings."
A January 1931 feature on Smith noted her two goals for her first session: "I do not intend to drape my feet over the top of a desk in the Capitol Building. And I am determined not to spatter the walls of the place with tobacco juice." (She was successful in both.)
The 1931 continued: " ... despite the handicap of her natural ignorance concerning the ramifications of Assembly politics, despite the fact that as a woman she somtimes incurred the resentment of the other Legislators, she carried out the major part of her program."
Among her many roles in local clubs was one as an officer of the St. Louis Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
Smith was also "an ardent supporter of prohibition," the feature noted.
Smith was married to a successful businessman, Edward T. Smith, and helped run the print company he owned. The couple had no children.
Smith lived at 717 Kingsbury. She was a trained lyric soprano.
Unlike the first Black man elected to the legislature, Smith received a news obituary in the Post-Dispatch when she died in 1957.
