Eugenie Anderson and Coya Knutson had a lot in common. They were born three years apart (1909 and 1912), they both entered Minnesota politics in the '40s and they died only a year apart (1997 and 1996).
In between, they became wives and mothers.
But while Coya Knutson's political career was derailed in the '50s by the “Coya, Come Home” letters, (believed to have been written by Knutson’s Republican opponents and signed by her husband) Eugenie Anderson was able to politely but unshakeably assert that "gender has no place in politics", decades before Hillary Clinton would run for president.
Mrs. Ambassador: The Life and Politics of Eugenie Anderson is published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press.
