It's the first Friday in December; it's also the day of the week when I share a quotation intended to be informative or enlightening. Inspired by the tributes to Rosalynn Carter, I was looking for a good first lady quote. I didn't need to look far, as I'm spending the week on the Stanford University campus, courtesy of the Hoover Institution. Today's inspiring words come from Lou Henry Hoover, wife of the 31st U.S. president.
In the winter of 1899, two Stanford University geology students were married in Monterey, California. The bride was Lou Henry, a natural athlete, avid outdoorswoman, and academic star who spoke several languages and whose deep religious faith translated into a lifetime of helping the least among us.
Under her married name, this extraordinary woman was destined to take her place in the United States' long line of activist and inspirational first ladies. Like several others, she shined in spite of her husband's tenure as president, not because of it.
Lou was a strong advocate of universal suffrage and once commented about the need for all women to exploit their right to vote. "Bad men are elected by good women who stay at home from the polls on Election Day," she said.
Lou Henry's father had evidently wanted a son, but aside from that unorthodox first name, no one in that clan ever let gender -- or anything else -- slow them down. Charles Henry took his daughter hunting and fishing in the woods and fields of Iowa, and she learned to skate and sled on the frozen Cedar River. When Lou was 11, her family moved to California where she became an instant Westerner. She climbed trees to tie up rope swings, organized pickup baseball games on vacant fields, and became an expert horsewoman who eschewed sidesaddle. She collected reptiles as pets, starred as Joan of Arc in the school play, and wrote two school essays at age14: "Universal Suffrage" and "The Independent Girl."
Lou had intended to be a schoolteacher and she earned a teaching certificate at San Jose State, but ended up at Stanford, where she was the school's first female geology major, and perhaps the first at any university in this country. It was in Palo Alto that she met her future husband, "Bert." Their honeymoon was in China, where he had accepted a job and where she set a precedent as being prepared for any kind of action.
Lou Hoover immersed herself in Chinese art, history, and culture. She learned Mandarin -- her fifth language besides English -- faster and more thoroughly than her husband and manned the barricades with him when the Boxer Rebellion broke out. Their house was riddled with bullets, but Herbert Hoover and his wife were unhurt. And Bert had to be impressed that his wife learned to shoot a pistol -- just in case.
The forbidding history of the 20th century seemed to attach itself to this couple: At their next posting in London, World War I broke out. Mrs. Hoover joined her husband in organizing war relief efforts credited with saving hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Europeans from starvation.
As first lady, Lou was considered demanding by the White House staff and aloof by the journalists who covered the Hoover administration. She had a vision for her job, and a plan. Mrs. Hoover was the first wife of a president to address the nation via the radio. She undertook a public speaking schedule of her own. And she quietly demonstrated the values she'd laid out in "Independent Girl."
Without fanfare, Lou Hoover put a stop to the antediluvian custom of not inviting pregnant women to White House social occasions. In an act of courtesy that did not go down so easily, she also tendered an invitation to a White House tea for congressional wives to Jessie DePriest, an African American woman married to black congressman Oscar DePriest.
This simple gesture brought fierce reaction from southern segregationists. Newspapers in the South howled. Sen. Thaddeus H. Caraway of Arkansas had an account of the event read into the Congressional Record in protest. The first lady stood accused of "defiling" the White House. Actually, Lou Hoover had done just the opposite: She had done the old mansion proud.
Her quiet but unwavering activism had been foreshadowed before her husband won the presidency. In May 1923, when Warren G. Harding was president and Lou Hoover's husband was Commerce secretary, she addressed a Republican women's group in Philadelphia.
"Women have come to stay in politics," Lou Hoover said. "There is no way of keeping out and there is no such thing as a neutral or passive voice. If you are not active, you are helping the other side."
And that is our quote of the week.
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon
