The year in which the USA may possibly elect its first female president seems a good time to reflect that until 32 years ago neither of the USA’s two main political parties had ever selected a woman as candidate either for president or vice president (VP). The woman who changed that, and blazed a trail which Hillary Clinton was eventually to follow, was Geraldine Ferraro.
She was born in 1935 in Newburgh, New York, to Dominick and Antonetta Ferraro, who had come to the USA from Italy after the First World War. Her father owned a small restaurant and shop, but he died when Geraldine was 8 years old. Her mother sold the business, and moved to New York. Though badly affected by her father’s death, Geraldine did well at school and won a scholarship to Marymount College, where she studied English. While teaching in a high school in Queens, she went to evening classes at Fordham Law School, from where she graduated with a law degree in 1960 as one of two women in a class of 179.
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