Daisy Holcomb was a teacher in this circa 1902 photo taken in Springdale. Following her failed bid for Fayetteville city clerk in 1922, she became a zoology professor at the University of Arkansas.
In 1922, Daisy Holcomb did something no other woman had: she ran for Fayetteville city office.
Women were granted the right to vote only two years earlier, so it was only a matter of time before they might aspire to govern, even in Fayetteville. “Mrs. Bruce Holcomb,” as the local newspaper referred to her, sought the Democratic nomination for city clerk, challenging four male candidates, including theincumbent. (Though not a city government office, Roberta Fulbright unsuccessfully ran for the school board a year earlier. Her loss was attributed to the small turnout by women who were able to pay the then-mandatory poll tax. The discriminatory practice of poll taxes was outlawed in 1965.)
Holcomb’s announcement made the statewide newspapers. Locally, the Fayetteville Daily Democrat was female-operated with Fulbright as publisher and Lessie Stringfellow Read its editor. Stringfellow, a notable suffragist, interviewed Holcomb for her column, “What Women Talk About.” Holcomb played her hand carefully.
“It isn’t as if I were candidate for an office for which a man is peculiarly fitted,” Holcomb told Stringfellow.
“The office of city clerk is really only being a secretary to the city council. For generations, women have been good secretaries.”
Daisy Holcomb made her case why she should be elected to Fayetteville city clerk in this advertisement she placed in the Fayetteville Daily Democrat on March 6, 1922.
In her campaign ad placed with the newspaper, Holcomb stated she wasn’t interested in entering politics but, instead, wanted to “obtain a positionwhich paid some salary and which I could attend to without seriously interfering with my home duties.” She advocated that elected officials serve “TWO terms and out,” noting that her opponent, if re-elected, would be serving his fourth.
She lost the race by only 36 votes. Two months later, Pernelia Frost (or, “Mrs. W.J. Frost,” as the newspaper called her) was elected to the Fayetteville School Board. In 1927, Selinda Reep (“Mrs. William Reep”), the only woman candidate that year, unsuccessfully ran for mayor following a rumor there would be an all-female ticket against the male-dominated Democratic candidates.
Women, however, gained a stronger presence in all areas of Fayetteville city government by the mid-20th century. Most notably, Marion Orton became Fayetteville’s first female mayor in 1975, and the city clerk position has been held by women since the mid-1970s.
With her political career behind her, Holcomb became an associate professor of zoology at the University of Arkansas, earning emeritus status in 1946. She died in 1963 at the age of 83 and is buried in Fayetteville’s Evergreen Cemetery. A college scholarship was established in her memory.
By Sandra Cox Birchfield, Shiloh Museum of Ozark History
