ELIZABETH "LIZZIE" COHEN
President 1900-1902, 1907-1915
Born Elizabeth Magdalene Sutton on March 16, 1859 in New York City, she married Joseph Maurice Cohen on May 16, 1877. Together they raised 4 children. Elizabeth lived in Park City for a short time after she first came to Utah in the 1880s. She assisted her husband Joseph in his duty as Park City registrar, and became very active in progressive women’s clubs and politics when they later moved to Salt Lake City. Joseph had a short term role in Utah politics as Secretary of the Democratic State committee in the 1890s and as recorder on the 1906 American State ticket, but mainly he spent his time on his business.
Elizabeth however, canvassed door-to-door in Salt Lake City during the 1896 election to get out the vote. In 1900, Cohen was selected as an alternate for the Democratic national convention held in Kansas City, and circumstances changed such that she ended up serving as a delegate. This made her the first woman to serve as a delegate to a national political convention.
At the convention, Cohen seconded the nomination of William Jennings Bryan for president. As she made her way to the stage, accompanied by Senator Rawlins of Utah, she received the cheers and tribute of 20,000 conventioneers. Newspapers reported:
“When the only woman delegate appeared in front with Chairman Richardson at her side, where all could see her, the uproar doubled in volume. Men and women stood up in their seats, waving flags, others beat the floor and the backs of seats with canes, some whistled and in the midst of all the commotion the band struck up ‘The Star Spangled Banner’.”
Cohen proved to be an outspoken organizer as president of Utah Woman's Democratic Club and with the Democratic Party as state committee secretary. But suddenly, around 1906, she switched parties to become a member and president of the Utah Woman's American Club. Cohen's position may have shifted because, according to the Oct. 27, 1906 Goodwin's Weekly, "national issues would not be strengthened or weakened" by either Republican or Democratic party in Utah, as "both rely upon the will of the few chief priests of the Mormon church such successes they may gain." Cohen asserted, "[Utah Gentiles] have never asked aught except that the Mormon church people shall come within the righteous laws of the United States."
In a 1908 letter to the "Women of Illinois," Cohen called for the defeat of Sen. Albert Hopkins whom, she declared, was duplicitous when addressing whether "Apostle Smoot" — Sen. Reed Smoot — was entitled to a U.S. Senate seat from Utah. Her remarks rankled many Utah Mormon women who retaliated with scathing rebuttals in the Deseret News.
She also served as president and later secretary of the Utah Council of Women, which worked to secure a national women’s suffrage amendment, and proudly marched up Salt Lake City’s Main Street in August 1915 with suffragists from the National Woman’s Party including Emmeline B. Wells, editor of the pro-Mormon journal Women's Exponent, and Hannah Lapish.
When presidential candidate Woodrow Wilson welcomed "women into the field of politics," Utah women took notice. And, at a newly organized Woodrow Wilson Club meeting held in Provo, Cohen addressed the constitutional amendment for suffrage. According to a Sept. 21, 1916, Salt Lake Tribune article, the fervent speaker urged "active, effective work by [local] women in support of the ticket."
And, the activist became commissioner of pensions for Utah under Gov. Simon Bamberger.
Elizabeth M. Cohen died on March 18, 1931 at age 72. She is buried in Wasatch Lawn Memorial Park in Millcreek, Utah.
The information for this narrative is from: Eileen Hallet Stone, author of "Hidden History of Utah," a compilation of her "Living History"; Biographical Sketch of Elizabeth Magdalene Cohen; Stone, Eileen Hallet, "Living history: Elizabeth Cohen, an early advocate for women's rights in Utah," The Salt Lake Tribune, March 11, 2016.