"WE ARE HERE TO HELP YOU, AND WE HAVE COME TO STAY!" In 1892, Judith Ellen Foster addressed these words to the men assembled for the Republican National Convention. But the participation by Foster and other women in party politics during the next 80 years has been largely forgotten. For the last two decades, Kristie Miller has been working to write women back into history. She is especially interested in women's participation in politics. First, women had to win the vote. The men had it easy - they could fight for the right to vote. Women had to persuade those in power to surrender half of their authority - in some ways a harder task. After women won the vote, they had to overcome prejudice, apathy, and the old boys' network to gain a place in the councils of government. Hillary Clinton, Condoleeza Rice, and Sandra Day O'Connor are all standing on the shoulders of these giants. Kristie has been writing some of their stories.

Current Projects

Kristie is working on several different projects. She is researching a dual biography of the two wives of US President Woodrow Wilson: Ellen Axson Wilson and Edith Bolling Galt Wilson.

Ellen, a well-educated, shrewd, yet idealistic woman who had her own career as a painter, died during Wilson's second year in office. But on her deathbed she convinced members of Congress to pass the social welfare legislation for which she had worked. She also tolerated Wilson's intimate friendship with another woman for the sake of his political career.

Edith was a wealthy widow who inherited a jewelry company from her first husband, and drove one of the capital city's first electric cars. After her marriage to Wilson, she became so involved with the day-to-day workings of his administration, especially after his stroke in 1919.

In addition, Kristie is editing the complete 50-year correspondence of Eleanor Roosevelt and Isabella Greenway, about whom Kristie wrote a book published in 2004. She is also writing a film treatment of their friendship and political partnership.

Quick Links

Most Recent Work

Biography
Isabella Greenway: An Enterprising Woman (2004) University of Arizona Press.

Isabella Greenway was at home on the western range and in New York salons, an energetic entrepreneur who managed a ranch, an airline and a resort, a politician who became a key player in the New Deal. A lifelong friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, Isabella blazed a trail for remarkable women in Arizona politics, from Sandra Day O'Connor to Governor Janet Napolitano.

Now in paperback.

Selected Works

Biography
Ruth Hanna McCormick: A Life in Politics 1880-1944
McCormick was a pioneering woman in politics, the first in many fields, associated with major figures and political events for nearly fifty years.

Edited Volume
We Have Come to Stay: American Women and Political Parties, 1880-1960 (1999) with Melanie Gustafson and Elisabeth Israels Perry.
Women's participation in political parties has been much more lengthy and varied than previously thought.

Magazine Article
"A Volume of Friendship: The Correspondence of Isabella Greenway and Eleanor Roosevelt, 1904-1953," Journal of Arizona History, Summer 1999
For half a century Isabella Greenway and Eleanor Roosevelt wrote to each other about their lives, losses, husbands and political ambitions.