Kristie Miller: Edith Bolling Wilson

Flamboyant, confident, and controversial, Edith Bolling Wilson was not your traditional First Lady. After her husband, Woodrow Wilson, suffered a debilitating stroke in 1919, she took the reins of government and acted on behalf of her ailing spouse. Historian Kristie Miller looks into the life of the woman known as “Madame Regent” and “the Assistant President” and asks: Was Edith Wilson, in effect, our first woman president?

Miller is a research associate at the Southwest Center, University of Arizona and author of Ellen and Edith: Woodrow Wilson’s First Ladies.

Co-presented with the Truman Library Institute; co-sponsored by KCUR’s Up to Date.