by Laurel | December 11th, 2011
Another first for Holyoke — a woman gets elected to the School Board — and with a landslide victory!
Almira (Leavitt) Cox
11 December 1927
The election of Mrs. Almira Cox as the first woman member of the School Board of Holyoke is a small epoch in itself and is no small tribute to the belief of the Holyoke voters that she is exceptionally well qualified for the position. But the real significance of her election lies deeper than that and needs to be noted in passing; and that is to the normal vote that she might expect to receive was added thousands of votes, of those not of her own faith, to resent the attempt to inject quasi-religious issues into the situation and adjudge her fitness by the slide rule of bigotry. Whether those who thus brought up the matter knew fully what they were doing, other may decide; but it is a splendid tribute to the independence and broad vision of men and women of Catholic Holyoke that they by thousands voted to make manifest that they valued character and fitness and to rebuke the measurement of a candidate for the school board by any other standards. It is an object lesson that cannot be studied too closely or too long remembered. The school board has been slipping a little from its high ideals the past year; and perhaps Mrs. Cox will be able to be of value to aid in the retention of those ideas and if occasion arises of assisting in advances toward a higher idealism.
From The Springfield Republican.
