India Edwards; Early Woman VP Nominee

India Edwards, one of the most visible women in Democratic Party councils during the 1940s and ‘50s and believed to be the first woman in American history to be nominated for vice president, has died in a Sebastopol, Calif., nursing home.

Mrs. Edwards, who quickly declined the 1952 nomination as Adlai E. Stevenson’s running mate, calling it a “courtesy gesture,” was 94 when she died Sunday.

A close adviser to President Harry S. Truman and a one-time society editor and reporter for the Chicago Tribune, Mrs. Edwards was considered to be the first woman to open the inner circles of political power to women. Before that, she told the Christian Science Monitor in 1984 when Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman ever to run for vice president, women were admitted to smoke-filled political arenas by right of marriage or by their ability to serve as hostesses.

India Edwards (the first name was a family tradition) had entered politics as a volunteer in 1944 and rose to become vice chair--she abhorred such designations as “chairperson,” “chairwoman” and “Ms.”--of the Democratic National Committee in 1948, the first woman in that post. She said that Truman offered her the post in 1951 but she turned it down, fearing that her appointment would split the party too close to the 1952 presidential race.

The vice presidential nomination at the Democratic presidential convention later was a historic honor but she rejected it, saying, “Men just aren’t ready for a woman.”

(In a 1977 interview with the Los Angeles Times, she recalled that Stevenson once asked her, “What are you doing in politics with such an attractive husband?”)

An an adviser to Truman, she pushed him to appoint Georgia Neese Clark as the first woman United States treasurer. She was also active in the presidential campaigns of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Mrs. Edwards was a delegate to the World Health Conference for Truman in 1951 and served in the Office of Emergency Planning in the Johnson Administration. She also served on the secretary of defense’s advisory committee on women in the armed forces.

Her memoirs, “Pulling No Punches” (a title first suggested by Truman), were published in 1977. A critic for the New York Times wrote that it appeared that Mrs. Edwards “had an awfully good time of her life.”

Mrs. Edwards and her third husband, Herbert, a former State Department employee who died in 1977, moved to California after her retirement from politics and lived in Palm Desert and later in Greenbrae and Sebastopol, a town north of San Francisco.