When Catherine May entered Congress 66 years ago this month representing the Tri-Cities and the massive 4th Congressional District, women still were treated in many ways as second-class citizens.

Less pay for the same job. Earned promotions not forthcoming. Denied access to what should be shared public accommodations. 

The new congresswoman didn’t expect to find such treatment in her new workplace – the very halls of Congress.

But, she did.

Catherine May was the first woman elected to represent Washington state in Congress where she served for 12 years.

| Courtesy Washington Secretary of State

The good-old-boys network of male congressmen had their own system of discrimination.

By the time her 12 years in Congress ended in 1971, much had changed, thanks to May and a bipartisan contingent of congresswomen who said, “No more.”

Women elected to the 119th Congress convening on Jan. 3, 2025, will not encounter such overt discriminatory practices, thanks to May and other women like her.

She became not only a breaker of social barriers for women in Congress, but to historical barriers in Washington state as well.

May became the first woman to represent Washington state in Congress with her oath of office on Jan. 3, 1959.

Born in Yakima and a graduate of Yakima High School (now Davis High School), May memorized the Bill of Rights and the preamble to the Constitution of the United States as a child.

Her friends called her “Catherine the Brave."

A graduate of the University of Washington, she became a high school teacher in Chehalis and  in 1940 became a radio broadcaster for KMO in Tacoma.

During World War II, May was lured away from Seattle to New York City by NBC while her husband, James O. May, served in the Army.

She produced the first “Betty Crocker Show” on radio while writing scripts for it. The Mays returned to Yakima when the war ended.

State office

At the urging of her husband in 1952, she ran for a seat in the Washington state Legislature. Old guard Republicans considered her a pest and a “short, chubby, talkative housewife.” 

She pulled an upset in the September Republican primary and on Nov. 6, 1952, won the general election, becoming one of nine women elected to the 99-member Legislature at the time. 

Reelections followed in 1954 and 1956, and in 1958 she entered the 4th District race for Congress and upset a solid field of Republicans in the primary before facing a popular Democrat who barely lost in the 1956 general election. Members of her own party, considering her campaign a lost cause, gave little support.

On Nov. 4, 1958, she pulled off a resounding upset.

Arriving in Washington, D.C., the new congresswoman found male members of Congress refused to let congresswomen use the House gym and swimming pool. Only men could participate in golf outings at the Burning Tree Country Club and the Republican-only Marching and Chowder Society for informal planning and relaxation sessions. 

Female members also were denied access to the balcony behind the office of speaker of the House. 

Step aside

May and other female lawmakers, specifically Patsy Mink, a Democrat from Hawaii, and Charlotte Reid, a Republican from Illinois, took on their Republican and Democrat male counterparts.

First, the three arrived outside the House gym with their workout bags. Step aside, they told the men, they were coming in. Then the barrier to pool use crumbled under their insistence. 

Soon all the House discriminatory practices came tumbling down. 

When the 1964 Civil Rights Act was introduced, May and the other women pulled an end run and managed to include in the proposed legislation an end to discriminatory practices against women, in addition to those of color. 

When the Civil Rights bill passed, it became illegal to not only discriminate on the basis of race, but also on the basis of sex.

May was a cosponsor of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and introduced it with the opening of each new Congress she served. It passed Congress the year after she left, but didn’t make it through state Legislature provisions for passing a new amendment to the Constitution.

“We had no women anywhere: no women pages, no women at the doorkeeper’s office, in the parliamentarian’s office, no women Capitol Police,” she said, reflecting years later. 

May helped sponsor the Equal Pay Act of 1963. She gently chided both presidents Kennedy, a Democrat, and Nixon, a Republican, for failing to appoint more women to senior positions.

Asked once early in her career as a congresswoman if she felt America was a “woman’s country.”

She replied: “No, if it were a woman’s country, it would give priority to the humane side of problems that seem like details to men. But, sometimes these details have big implications in regard to safety, comfort or health of the people.”

Gale Metcalf of Kennewick is a lifelong Tri-Citian, retired Tri-City Herald employee and volunteer for the East Benton County Historical Museum. He writes the monthly history column.