#700 Edith Wilson: The First Unelected Woman President - Rebecca Boggs Roberts

Edith Wilson: The First Unelected Woman President - Rebecca Boggs Roberts

The Not Old Better Show, Smithsonian Associates Interview Series

Welcome to The Not Old Better Show, Smithsonian Associates interview for Women’s History initiative on radio and podcast. I’m Paul Vogelzang, and we have an excellent program about Women’s History, power, and Edith Wilson, wife of Pres. Woodrow Wilson.  Our returning guest is Smithsonian Associate, journalist, and author Rebecca Boggs Roberts, who has written the new book, Untold Power: The Fascinating Rise and Complex Legacy of First Lady Edith Wilson by Rebecca Boggs Roberts

I’ll introduce Rebecca Boggs Roberts in just a moment, but quickly, if you missed any shows recently, last week was our 699th episode I spoke with #1 NYT bestselling author Mark Greaney about his new book, part of The Gray Man series, “Burner,” already a bestseller. Two weeks ago, I spoke with author and journalist Philip Bump about his new book,  “The Aftermath: the Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America”  Wonderful subjects for our Not Old Better Show audience…If you missed those shows, along with any others, you can go back and check them out with my entire back catalog of shows, all free for you, there on our website, NotOld-Better.com

Our guest today is Smithsonian Associate, author, and journalist Rebecca Boggs Roberts.  Rebecca Boggs Roberts will be appearing at Smithsonian Associates coming up, so please check out details of her Zoom presentation in our show notes today.  The title of Rebecca Boggs Roberts’ presentation is Edith Wilson: The First (Unelected) Woman President. 

While this nation has yet to elect its first woman president—and though history has downplayed her role—just over a century ago a woman became the nation’s first acting president. In fact, she was born in 1872, and her name was Edith Bolling Galt Wilson. She climbed her way out of Appalachian poverty and into the highest echelons of American power and in 1919 effectively acted as the first woman president of the U.S. (before women could even vote nationwide) when her husband, Woodrow Wilson, was incapacitated. Beautiful, brilliant, charismatic, catty, and calculating, she was a complicated figure whose personal quest for influence reshaped the position of First Lady into one of political prominence forever. And still nobody truly understands who she was.

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