Iowa Is Awesome – nikhil.io

Here are some more:

In 1869, Iowan Julia C. Addington became the first woman in the United States to be elected to a public office. She was elected to be Mitchell County Superintendent.
In 1871, Ada E. North became the first woman in the United States to be appointed to a statewide office. She was appointed as the Iowa State Librarian.
In 1869, Iowa became the first state to allow women to join the bar, which led to Iowa having the first female attorney in the U.S.: Arabella Mansfield.
In 1875, Emma Haddock of Iowa City became the first female in the United States to practice law before a federal court.

I am so proud to be an Iowan. Iowa is fucking awesome, and here is why:

In 1838, before we were even a state, our Supreme Court upheld the law that in Iowa escaped slaves couldn’t be forced to return to a slave state. The same year it became law an unmarried women could own property. In most of the rest of the US either category having any rights was laughable and were considered property themselves.
We were involved in a war with Missouri. The Honey War! was a border dispute that we Iowans may not have started but we sure as hell won.
We were the second state in the union to allow interracial marriage (1851) almost a century before it became legal in the rest of the US.
In 1851 Iowa legislated that, “the property of married women did not vest in her husband, nor did the husband control his wife’s property”.
In 1857 University of Iowa, my alma mater (Go Hawkeyes!!), was the first state university to have a degree program open for women.
For the American Civil War, Iowa contributed more men than any other state per capita. This despite the fact not a single major battle occurred on Iowan soil.
Iowa outlawed segregated schools in 1868. We were the second state in the union to do it and we did it close to a century before the rest of America.
Iowa elected the first women to public office in the united states, in 1869. That same year we were the first state to allow women to join the bar and we had the first female US attorney. This paved the way for Iowa to have the first female practice law before a federal court.
Iowa was passing civil rights act, prohibiting discrimination in public, all the way back in 1884.
Iowa was the third state (tip of the hat to Wyoming and Colorado for beating us to the punch)to give women the right to vote in 1894.
Iowa has the first mosque in the US and the only exclusively Muslim cemetery.
In 1953, amongst all the states of the union, only Iowa defeated a McCarthyistic legislative measure to impose a teacher’s loyalty oath.
Iowa was the first to have an openly gay man run for a seat in Congress. And the guy was a Republican!
In 2007, Iowa was the second state to allow full marriage to gays and lesbians.
In Iowa we protect our children from from bullying due to sexual orientation AND gender identity.

tl;dr: And for the two part cherry on the cake…

16) 2008 Democrat Caucuses, Iowa became the first in the nation to select Barack Obama as their choice for president. This when almost all political pundits thought he wasn’t a viable candidate. For some perspective on the Iowa is 95% white. You have to go to the North Pole to find a whiter place.

17) Norman Borlaug is an Iowa native son, born and bred. Who is Norman Borlaug you ask yourself? Look him up! He was the greatest man who ever lived, a man who saved a billion lives (No hyperbole).

QED Bitches.