June Tompkins Benson
Mildred June Tompkins Benson née Tomkins, commonly known as June Benson, (1915–1981) was the first woman to serve as mayor in the American State of Oklahoma when elected mayor of Norman in 1957 by city commissioners.[1][2] Benson was inducted into the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame in 1985.[3]
Biography
Benson was born on November 6, 1915 in McAlester, Oklahoma, the daughter of the Oklahoma legislator Elmer Tompkins and his wife Bessie. She married the political research professor Oliver Earl Benson on 1 June 1940 in Guthrie, Oklahoma. Thanks to New Deal funding, she studied political science at the University of Oklahoma, gaining a master's with a thesis on voting law reform. In 1952, she was the first woman to be elected to Norman's City Commission.[4] On May 14, 1957, she was elected mayor of Norman as "Mrs. Oliver Benson". Shortly afterwards, on May 26 she witnessed Gov. Raymond Gary's signing a bill to set up a central county voter registration system. Known as the Oklahoma Election Reform Act, it included measures for recording voters' signatures and periodic removals of the name of those who had died or moved away. The act represented acceptance of the proposals she had made in her university thesis on Election Practices in Oklahom.[2]
References
- ^ "June Benson Collection" (PDF). University of Oklahoma Libraries. Retrieved 31 July 2016.
- ^ a b Cole, Carol L. (24 July 2007). "First female mayor remembered as statesman". The Norman Transcript. Retrieved 31 July 2016.
{{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in:|publisher=(help) - ^ "Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame Inductees by Year". Oklahoma State Library. Retrieved 31 July 2016.
- ^ Benson, Ned Harold (1 September 2011). The Ancestors and Descendants of John Lewis Benson and His Sisters and Brother: A Genealogy and Social History. AuthorHouse. pp. 164–. ISBN 978-1-4670-2442-6.
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