McMillan, Clara Gooding (1894–1976)

U.S. representative in the 76th Congress (November 7, 1939–January 3, 1941) . Name variations: Clara Eloise McMillan. Born Clara Eloise Gooding on August 17, 1894, in Brunson, South Carolina; died on November 8, 1976, in Barnwell, South Carolina; daughter of William James Gooding and Mary Emily (Webb) Gooding; attended Savannah (GA) High School, Flora MacDonald College (Red Springs, NC), and Confederate Home College (Charleston, SC); married Thomas Sanders McMillan (1888–1939, a congressional representative), on December 16, 1916 (died September 29, 1939); children: Thomas Sanders; James Carroll; William Gooding; Edward Webb; Robert Hampton.

Chosen by House Democrats to finish late husband's Congressional term (1939); affiliated with National Youth Administration (1941); hired at Department of State (1946); retired from public service (1957).

In Clara McMillan's day, few women held public office of any sort, let alone a seat in Congress.

There was a precedent, however, of widows of elected representatives winning special elections and serving out the remainder of their late husband's terms in office. Born in 1894 in South Carolina, Clara Gooding attended two South Carolina colleges, Confederate Home and Flora MacDonald, before marrying Thomas McMillan. When he died in the middle of a term as representative from the First District of South Carolina in 1939, the state's Democratic Party leadership backed her candidacy in a special election. She won the election in November 1939, and took her seat in the U.S. House of Representatives the following January. McMillan served a full year in Washington, D.C., during which she spoke in favor of a bill establishing America's first peacetime draft and sat on the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, the Committee on Patents, and the Committee on the Election of President, Vice President, and Representatives in Congress. She chose not to run for a second term, and after 1941 worked for the National Youth Administration and later in the Office of War Information. From 1946 to 1957, McMillan was an information liaison officer at the Department of State. She died in South Carolina in 1976.

sources:

Office of the Historian. Women in Congress, 1917–1990. Commission on the Bicentenary of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1991.

Who's Who in America, 1940–41. Chicago, IL: A.N. Marquis, 1941.

Carol Brennan , Grosse Pointe, Michigan