Helen Ring Robinson

{{Infobox officeholder

|name = Helen Ring Robinson

|birthname = Helen Ring

|image = Helen Ring Robinson.jpeg

|alt =

|caption = Helen Ring Robinson circa 1913

|state2 = Colorado

|state_senate = Colorado

|district = 1st

|term_start2 = January 1, 1913

|term_end2 = January 3, 1917

|predecessor2 =

|successor2 =

|birth_date = 1878

|birth_place = Eastport, Maine, U.S.

|death_date = {{death year and age|1923|1878}}

|death_place = Denver, Colorado

|restingplace = Fairmount Cemetery, Denver, Colorado

|party = Democratic Party

|spouse = Ewing Robinson (m. February 13, 1902)

|children =

|parents = Thomas Warren Ring and Mary Margaret (Thompson) Ring

|alma_mater =

|profession = {{Plainlist|

}}

Helen Ring Robinson (1878–1923), was an American suffragist, writer, and political office holder. She was the first woman to serve as a state senator in the United States and the first in the Colorado State Senate. She was elected in 1912 and began her service in the 19th Colorado General Assembly, when she was sworn in on January 1, 1913.{{cite news |title=Senator Helen Ring Robinson Calls Herself the Housewives' Representative in Colorado. |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9806EEDE103FE633A25750C2A9679D946296D6CF |quote=" Every city in every State in the country is in need of motherliness," said Senator Helen Ring Robinson of Colorado before the League for Political Education at the Hudson Theatre yesterday morning in telling her audience that it was the womanly woman who was needed in politics, not a creature recreated in the image of man. |work=New York Times |date=November 23, 1913 |access-date=2008-12-10 }}{{cite web|url=http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/peace/wchmiel1/women%20in%20politics/P_R/Robinson,%20Helen%20Ring.htm |title=Helen Ring Robinson |access-date=2008-12-10 |publisher=Swarthmore College |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120304102656/http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/peace/wchmiel1/women%20in%20politics/P_R/Robinson%2C%20Helen%20Ring.htm |archive-date=March 4, 2012 |url-status=dead |df=mdy-all }}{{cite news |title=Helen R. Robinson of Colorado Defends the Suffrage Cause. |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A02E2DB133FE233A25751C2A96F9C946496D6CF |quote=Senator Helen Ring Robinson of Colorado was in New York City yesterday after having given a week to the suffrage campaign work in the upper part of the State and a week in New Jersey. Senator Robinson says that while she is helping the women here she is also trying to put down the incessant criticism of the suffrage States by Eastern people. |work=New York Times |date=September 22, 1915 |access-date=2008-12-10 }} She was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 2014.[https://www.cogreatwomen.org/project/helen-ring-robinson/ Colorado Women's Hall of Fame, Helen Ring Robinson]

Early life

Helen Ring Robinson was born in 1878 in Eastport, Maine. She grew up in New England and went to Wellesley College, a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts.{{cite news|title=Is The First.|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/76245121|via=Newspapers.com|access-date=23 November 2019|newspaper=The Charlotte Observer|date=13 April 1913}}

Career

=Educator=

Robinson moved to Denver in 1895 and taught at Wolfe Hall until 1898, when she went to teach at the Wolcott School for Girls. It was established by a friend who also lived in Providence. It was during her time at Wolcott that she became acquainted with members of Denver society.{{cite book|author=Pat Pascoe|title=Helen Ring Robinson|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ose9AwAAQBAJ&q=Wolcott&pg=PP19|date=November 1, 2011|publisher=University Press of Colorado|isbn=978-1-4571-1167-9|page=multiple PTs}}

=Journalist=

She then began working in the newspaper industry. She spent ten years as a literary critic and editorial writer for the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Times.Weatherford, Doris. "Helen Ring Robinson (1878–1923)," Women in American Politics: History and Milestones (SAGE Publications, 2012), pp. 136–137.

=Politics=

After leading a crusade against Denver's poor water service, she was recruited to run for office. She was elected to the Colorado Senate for one four-year term in 1912, and took office in 1913. While in office, she was appointed chair of the Colorado State Senate Education Committee. As a state senator, Robinson traveled the country making speeches on women's issues. In 1915 she served as a speaker for the Fayette Equal Rights Association, giving presentations throughout central Kentucky on woman suffrage.{{cite web |title=Fayette Equal Rights Association records, 1917-1920, 49m30, University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center, Lexington, Ky. |url=https://networks.h-net.org/fayette-era-annual-meeting-september-13-15-1915-phoenix-hotel |website=H-Kentucky |publisher=H-Net.org |access-date=20 September 2019}}

Among the progressive laws she passed were a minimum wage law for women and an abatement for property used for prostitution – both efforts to limit prostitution. Women were not allowed to serve on juries at that time, although women had received the vote in Colorado in 1893. All of Robinson's bills on this issue failed. Consequently, women could not serve on juries in the state until 1944.

Personal life

She died in 1923.{{cite news |title=Died |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,716238,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080505062421/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,716238,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=May 5, 2008 |quote=Mrs. Helen Ring Robinson, 45, of Colorado, first woman State Senator in the United States, suffrage leader, writer, lecturer, member of the Ford "peace pilgrimage" in 1915, at Denver, after a long illness. |work=Time magazine |date=July 23, 1923 |access-date=2008-12-10 }} Her body lay in state in the Capitol rotunda before her service. She was buried at Fairmount Cemetery in Denver.

Publications

Preparing Women for Citizenship (1918)
[http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.rbc/juv.23094 Uncle Tom's Cabin for Children] by Harriet Beecher Stowe; adapted by Helen Ring Robinson. From the Collections at the Library of Congress