Midway Memorial Bench Part 3

The other woman listed on the Midway Memorial Bench is Flora Sylvester Cheney. She had been a teacher in Wisconsin where she met Henry W. Cheney. Henry, a physician, was a graduate of the University of Chicago Medical School. They lived at 6041 S. Kenwood. He was for a time a professor of medicine at Northwestern University as well as a prominent physician--famous enough in his own right that the Inter-Ocean newspaper celebrated his birthday one year along with other prominent Chicagoans who shared the day.

When Flora Sylvester Cheney died, the headline said “Legislator is Dead at 57”—not “Woman Legislator” not “Mrs. Henry W. Cheney” but the unvarnished title “Legislator.” I think she would have liked that.

Flora Cheney was the organizer and strategist while Katherine Goode was the public speaker. I suspect Flora preferred being a force behind the scenes, but also she suffered from Hodgkin’s disease, which undoubtedly took a toll on her energies. 

Along with Katherine Goode, her political base was Woodlawn, starting with the Woodlawn Women’s Club. She was the executive chairwoman of the Woodlawn Community Center for 13 years. She was an organizer of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association, the first president of the Illinois League of Women Voters after suffrage passed. She was the editor of the League’s newspaper for 5 years. As her articles show, to her, the importance of votes for women was the faith that women would vote for improvements in education, public health, schools, child welfare, financial rights for women, and the workplace conditions of women workers. As the president of the League, she helped to formulate legislative initiatives. In her time, the League nationally pushed for the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921 for maternity and child care.

She ran a number of political campaigns—most notably Charles E. Merriam (famed progressive and urban theorist) for alderman and Katherine Hancock Goode for Illinois Assembly. It probably wasn’t a coincidence that Flora Cheney’s daughter was married to Charles E. Merriam’s son and that Katherine was her good friend.

When Katherine died suddenly of influenza, Flora Cheney stepped in to fill her term. She won re-election in her own right but died of her Hodgkin’s disease a few months later. The obituaries and memorials noted that she had literally sacrificed her health for the cause. In her short time in the Assembly she proposed legislation known as the Cheney Act to set up a commission to deal with the 100 contradictory pages of laws involving voting and registration to eliminate voter suppression. For instance, she campaigned for permanent voter registration rather than forcing voters to go through the process repeatedly.

While Katherine was the one with the University of Chicago connection and the more prominent profile as a speaker, it was Flora Cheney who got the large memorial service in Rockefeller Chapel, one of the first held there.

Goode and Cheney had a national reputation. In 1932, Illinois had four women on the National League of Women Voters Honor Roll of women who had fought for the vote: Jane Addams, Julia Lathrop, Katherine Goode, and Flora Cheney.

The bench brought her to my attention, but the Illinois League of Women Voters remember Flora Cheney. In 2011, they created an award for the member who exemplifies outstanding moral character and activism and named it for her.