Rebecca Latimore Felton was a prominent suffragist and the first woman to serve in the US Senate–for an entire 24 hours. 
In 1922, Governor Thomas W. Hardwick was a candidate for the next general election to the Senate, when Senator Thomas E. Watson died prematurely. Seeking an appointee who would not be a competitor in the coming special election to fill the vacant seat and a way to secure the vote of the new women voters alienated by his opposition to the 19th Amendment, Hardwick chose Felton to serve as senator on October 3, 1922.
Congress was not expected to reconvene until after the election, so the chances were slim that Felton would be sworn in. However, Walter F. George won the special election despite Hardwick’s ploy. Rather than take his seat immediately when the Senate reconvened on November 21, 1922, George allowed Felton to be sworn in. This was due in part to persuasion by Felton and a supportive campaign launched by the women of Georgia. Felton thus became the first woman seated in the Senate and served until George took office on November 22, 1922, one day later.
Which would probably be a more fascinating story if Felton’s views on race hadn’t been so barbaric. Felton and her husband owned slaves prior to the Civil War, making her brief stint as a Senator the last time someone who had been a slave owner would be a member of Congress. She was filled with a disgusting racial animus,
In 1899, a massive crowd of white Georgians tortured, mutilated, and burned a black man, Sam Hose, who purportedly had killed a white man in self-defense but had not committed the rape of the (white) woman whites accused him of. The crowd sold parts of his physical remains as souvenirs. Felton said that any “true-hearted husband or father” would have killed “the beast” and that Hose was due less sympathy than a rabid dog.
Felton also advocated more lynchings of black men, saying that such was “elysian” compared to the rape of white women. On at least one occasion, she stated that white Southerners should “lynch a thousand [black men] a week if it becomes necessary” to “protect woman’s dearest possession.”