Wold, Emma

In 1918 Emma Wold ran with the National Party for a seat in the Oregon House of Representatives. She lost. Wold had been a suffrage leader in Oregon for several years, and had been president of the College Equal Suffrage Association in the state. She had also been a teacher in Portland, and a clerk and superintendent in a Sunday school. Soon after her campaign, she moved to Washington, D.C., where she studied law and worked as the headquarters secretary of the National Woman's Party. While serving in this position, she wrote letters explaining the NWP's position on why they would not have a speaker from an African American organization at their convention in 1920. After the Nineteenth Amendment was passed, she continued working on legal aspects of women's rights. In 1930, President Hoover appointed her to be a delegate at the Conference for Codification of International Law at the Hague to represent women's interests in international law.