Geraldine Ferraro

Geraldine Anne Ferraro was a lawyer, three-term member of Congress, and the first woman nominated for vice president by a major U.S. political party. Born in Newburgh, New York, on August 26, 1935, she represented a Queens district in the House of Representatives from January 3, 1979, to January 3, 1985. Her 1984 Democratic nomination placed an Italian American woman on a major party's national ticket.

Ferraro explained her family's Italian connection in her own words. At the July 12, 1984 announcement of her selection as Walter Mondale's running mate, she said her father had come to the United States from Marcianise, Italy. Her remarks connected that family migration story with the working people among whom she grew up and the opportunities she associated with American life.

Before entering politics, Ferraro combined teaching with legal study. She earned a bachelor's degree at Marymount College and attended Fordham Law School in the evenings while teaching public school in Queens. She graduated from Fordham in 1960 as one of two women in a class of 179. Alongside raising three children, she practiced law and provided unpaid assistance to women in family court. She became an assistant district attorney in Queens in 1974 and worked on cases involving sexual violence and abuse.

In Congress, Ferraro served on committees dealing with the civil service, public works, aging, and the federal budget. She sponsored the Economic Equity Act in 1981 and advocated changes affecting women's pensions and retirement savings. Her political rise also included election as secretary of the Democratic Caucus and appointment to chair the party's 1984 platform committee. These positions give a fuller picture of her career than the vice-presidential nomination alone.

The Mondale–Ferraro ticket lost the 1984 election. Ferraro later sought the Democratic nomination for a New York Senate seat in 1992 and 1998 and served on the United Nations Commission on Human Rights from 1993 to 1996. She died in Boston on March 26, 2011.

Her alma mater recognized her work with the Fordham Law Alumni Association's Medal of Achievement in 2005 and induction into the university's Hall of Honor in 2011. Those institutional awards are documented in Fordham's own records.

Readers can explore Ferraro's public life through Fordham Law's digital archive. Its selected 1984 campaign materials include speeches, correspondence, photographs, and campaign documents. Reading these alongside the House biography makes it possible to hear her own language and examine how the campaign presented her experience, rather than encounter her only as a historical first.