Huck, Winnifred Sprague Mason, 1882-1936

Winnifred Mason Huck (September 14, 1882 – August 24, 1936) was an American journalist and politician from the state of Illinois who became the third woman to serve in the United States Congress, after Jeannette Rankin and Alice Mary Robertson, the first woman to represent Illinois in Congress, the first woman to win a special election for the United States Congress, and the first mother. She was elected to fill the at-large seat of her father, Representative William Ernest Mason, after his death.

Born Winnifred Sprague Mason in Chicago, Illinois, and attended public schools in Chicago and in Washington, D.C. In 1904, she married her high school sweetheart, Robert W. Huck. Robert Huck, a civil engineer, became a steel company executive, moving the family to Colorado. Later he worked as a construction engineer for the deep waterways commission, relocating the family to Chicago, where Winnifred Huck became active in her hometown community. Sje also worked as a secretary for her father.

Huck was elected as a Republican to the 67th United States Congress by special election to fill the vacancy caused by the June 1921 death of her father. She served a partial term from November 7, 1922 to March 3, 1923. Unlike most first-term Representatives, she introduced several bills. During her brief 14-week tenure, she served on the Committee on Expenditures in the Department of Commerce, the Committee on Reform in the Civil Service, and the Committee on Woman Suffrage. Huck focused her energies on continuing her father’s legislative goals, including support for restrictions on child labor and separate citizenship rights for married women. Winnifred Huck most vocally carried on William Mason’s legacy, however, as a pacifist with the goal of creating lasting peace following the end of World War I.

After her term expired, Huck served as the chair of the political council of the National Woman’s Party and made her living as a writer, authoring a syndicated newspaper column and working as an investigative reporter. In 1925, posing undercover as a convict in a women’s prison, she wrote a series of articles for the Chicago Evening Post on the criminal justice system, prison conditions, and the rehabilitation of the formerly incarcerated, creating a national sensation. In 1928 and 1929, Huck worked as a staff writer on the Chicago Evening Sun, and she also gave lectures. Suffering failing health during the last five years of her life, Huck lived in Chicago with her family until her death there from complications following abdominal surgery.