Firsts in public office, tested one by one

1896 – 2013

The school board, 1896: the first woman to hold public office in South Bend reached it by appointment, not election, and by siege, not invitation. The Progress Club — the women's club whose own entry follows — campaigned in the mid-1890s to bring kindergartens to the public schools, and, in the words of the Indiana University South Bend African American Landmark Tour's account, "made life uncomfortable for the members of the council for several weeks," assailing council members "at their homes, places of business, on the streets, and everywhere one happened to come in sight of a Progress club committee." The tactics worked: the council selected the club's president, Catherine C. Esmay, to serve on the city's school board — the board then being appointed by the Common Council — and in 1896 kindergarten classes opened in the city's schools, Linden School's among them. The Landmark Tour credits Esmay as the first woman to hold public office in South Bend, and the credit is printed here at exactly that strength: an appointed school-board seat, won by organized pressure, documented by the university's tour and by the club's own history.

The bench: Elizabeth Fletcher Allen — admitted to the Indiana bar in 1938, the first Black woman lawyer in the state, her whole record in the Black History and People sections — was appointed judge pro tem in 1953, 1955, and 1960, and the appointments made her the first woman judge in South Bend, in the South Bend Education Alliance's Hall of Fame account; her own memory of the era's terms survives in her saying that "to be a woman lawyer you have to have the hide of a rhinoceros." She was, in the Alliance's words, "the only female practicing attorney during many of those years."

The jury box: Indiana women became jurors through the ballot itself, and the point had to be litigated to be believed. The state supreme court held in Palmer v. State (1926) that because jurors were drawn from the qualified electors, the adoption of the amendment making women voters qualified them for jury service — grand jury included — and that women had been so eligible since they became voters; the indictment under review had been returned at the February term, 1924, by a grand jury one of whose members was a woman, and the court refused to void it for that reason. Wilkinson v. State, the same year, confirmed that a woman householder and voter of the county was a competent juror in a criminal trial. The celebrated all-women-jury firsts of the era are not this city's: the first jury of women in an Indiana court sat at Indianapolis on 28 August 1920, and the first all-women jury trial in the state is claimed for Vernon, in Jennings County, on 6 June 1921. No first South Bend woman juror is named in the record reached for this section; the local first stands as a gap, and the Indianapolis and Vernon claims are printed here only so that they are not mistaken for it.

The Common Council, from the council's own count: the council's Women's History Month resolution, adopted in 2013, enumerates the women of the city's legislative branch in its own words, and this roster follows it. Janet S. Allen, a Republican elected at large in November 1962, served 1963 to 1971 — the first woman on the Common Council. Mary Chris Adams, at large, served 1976 to 1979, the second. Beverlie J. Beck, of the First District, served 1980 to 1987 — the first woman council vice-president, in 1980, and the first woman president of the council, 1983 through 1986. Beverly D. Crone, at large, served 1980 to 1986, and left the council to become St. Joseph County Auditor and afterward a county commissioner. Eugenia Braboy, of the Second District, served 1984 to 1987 — the first African-American woman on the council, and its vice-president in each of her four years; she also sat as a trustee of the South Bend Community School Corporation.

Ann B. Puzzello, of the Fourth District, served 1984 to 1995 and again 2004 to 2011 — the longest-serving woman on the council, and the first woman to return to it. Loretta J. Duda, at large, served 1988 to 1995, and left to become South Bend city clerk in 1996. Charlotte D. Pfeifer, of the Second District, elected in 1995 and serving 1996 to 2007, became the council's first Black president. Karen L. White, at large from 2000, was council president in 2003 and 2004. Valerie Schey, of the Third District, began her service in 2012 — the tenth woman elected to the council, on the resolution's own count. The council's 2010 resolution had fixed the two headline firsts in the same terms: "1963 — Janet S. Allen became the 1st woman to serve on the South Bend Common Council; 1983 — Beverlie Beck was elected as the 1st woman President of the South Bend Common Council."

The mayor's office: no woman has held it. The nearest documented approach is Janet Allen's second act: in 1971, at sixty-seven, the former councilwoman was the Republican nominee for mayor — the Government section carries the race — and lost to Jerry Miller by a margin of roughly ten thousand five hundred votes. The mayoral-elections record states the standing fact as of its writing: as of 2019, no woman had been elected mayor of South Bend. Mannering's voided nomination of 1917 and Allen's defeat of 1971 are the two documented runs, fifty-four years apart, and the office's line stands open.

Sources:

1. IU South Bend, African American Landmark Tour, Linden School chapter — the Progress Club's kindergarten campaign, the council "assailing" passage, Esmay's selection to the school board, kindergarten at Linden in 1896, and the credit to Esmay as the first woman to hold public office in South Bend.
2. South Bend Common Council, Women's History Month resolutions — Resolution 4018-10 (22 March 2010) for the 1963 and 1983 firsts; the 2013 resolution (Bill 13-25) for the full roster of the council's ten women with their districts, years, and firsts, from Allen through Schey.
3. City of South Bend council minutes, 5 January 1987 — Resolution 1460-87 commending Beverlie J. Beck as the first woman elected president of the Common Council, 1 January 1983, and re-elected through 1986.
4. South Bend Education Alliance, Community Hall of Fame — Janet Allen, first woman elected to the Common Council, the 1971 mayoral nomination at sixty-seven; Elizabeth Fletcher-Allen, the judge pro tem appointments of 1953, 1955, and 1960 as the first woman judge in South Bend, and the only female practicing attorney of many of those years.
5. Palmer v. State, 197 Ind. 625 (1926), and Wilkinson v. State, 197 Ind. 642 (1926) — women's jury eligibility from the franchise; the 1924 grand jury with a woman member; the qualified woman householder-juror.
6. Indiana History Blog (Indiana Historical Society), "Indiana's First Jury of Women" and "Fourteen-Minute Women" — the all-women jury at Indianapolis, 28 August 1920; the Vernon, Jennings County, claim of 6 June 1921, from the Jennings County history, carried by the National Trust's Where Women Made History register.
7. Mayoral elections in South Bend, Indiana (the elections record) — Janet Allen's 1971 nomination and defeat by roughly 10,500 votes, and the statement that as of 2019 no woman had been elected mayor of South Bend.
8. Indiana Bar Association, "Women's History Month: Remembering Trailblazers in our Profession" (2021) — Elizabeth Fletcher Allen's 1938 bar admission, the Allen and Allen firm, and her "hide of a rhinoceros" saying.
9. IU South Bend, Distinguished Alumni Award profile of Charlotte D. Pfeifer-Gillam — her council service and election, and her standing as the council's first Black president.