For many women voters, a most meaningful vote

Willie Boston was born in Oxford, Miss., in 1918, when whites and blacks could not attend the same schools, few married women held jobs outside the home - and only men could enter the polling booth.

She grew up in the Deep South, and for years worked a $1.50-a-week job washing clothes of white families before moving to Philadelphia. No matter where she lived, Boston said, she did as she was told: worked hard, kept her head down, and stayed quiet.

She had dreams beyond housekeeping - of school, a career. But she knew that as a woman, a black woman, it wasn't possible. "I just accepted it," she said.

Nearly more than a century later, the world had changed: A major political party had chosen a female presidential nominee. And on Tuesday afternoon, after always voting to put men in the White House, Boston, now 98 - and finally, a retired nurse - was anxious to cast a ballot for Hillary Clinton.

"It feels wonderful," she said, sitting inside the West Philadelphia Senior Community Center, waiting for her ride to the polls.

Tuesday was the final day of the most contentious race in a generation - one drenched in scandal and negative attacks. But across the region, some of that melted almost out of sight, as women like Boston reveled in a historic day.

Some voted with tears in their eyes. Others proudly posted photos - selfies with 'I Voted' stickers and shirts boasting the phrases "Nasty Woman" and "The Future Is Female."

Nationally, tens of thousands pulled out their best pantsuits to support their nominee and her signature fashion item. At the graves of suffragists Susan B. Anthony in New York and Alice Paul in South Jersey, voters posted stickers, flowers and thank-you letters.

The votes weren't purely feminist. After an election dominated by headlines of Republican nominee Donald Trump's remarks about women, some votes across the region were as much a vote for her as they were a vote against him. In Pennsylvania, Trump drew 39 percent of the female voters vs. Clinton's 58 percent, according to a CNN exit poll. Only 16 percent of Latino women voters cast a ballot for Trump, and just 1 percent of black women voters.

"Trump doesn't like women," said 72-year-old Arlene Coverdale, who voted for Clinton on Tuesday at the Pinn Memorial Baptist Church in Wynnefield. "He doesn't know how to talk to us or to anybody. I was raised with how to talk to people."

For Rujean Mitinger, nothing could stop her from casting a ballot for the Democratic nominee - not even emergency surgery.

Mitinger, an 81-year-old Chestnut Hill resident, has never missed an election. So when she fell and shattered her hip while working at Chestnut Hill Hospital last Friday, she was worried her streak would end. She needed hip-replacement surgery - right at the time she could cast her a vote for the first female president.

Luckily, her son Ed came to the rescue, preparing to ferry her completed absentee ballot. She usually splits the ticket, but not this time. All Democrats.

Beyond voting for Clinton this election, Mitinger said, Tuesday was meaningful in another way: It was a reason to believe her three granddaughters may someday have the opportunity to be president.

"Hillary has had the experience and so forth and that's why I'm more enthusiastic for her," Mitinger said, sitting in a wheelchair at the rehab wing of Cathedral Village, a retirement community in Roxborough. "Yes, she's done some wrong things, but I don't think they should affect her future."

Across the river in Haddonfield, Karen Casale, 47, a mother of four, became teary-eyed as she walked to the borough hall to cast her vote for Clinton.

The stay-at-home mother stopped to ask a stranger to take a photograph of her, a keepsake for her daughter, Tara, 13.

"I've always raised her to believe that there is no glass ceiling," said Casale, choking back tears. "Now she can truly follow her dreams anywhere in the world."

Casale said she has voted in every election since she turned 18. "I didn't expect to get emotional," she said. "I'm so excited that I'm voting for a woman."

Back at the West Philadelphia senior center Tuesday afternoon, 77-year-old Helen Rayon was preparing to leave to vote for Clinton. After a lifetime of fighting for better rights for women and minorities - Rayon said she was instrumental in a South Carolina sit-in during the civil rights era - the West Philadelphia resident said she had come too far to watch Clinton lose.

"America is stubborn against women as leaders," Rayon said. "But Hillary has been a trouper from her early adult life."

"She has stood up to people. ... She overcame adversities," she said. "That's the quality I look for in a leader."

cmccabe@philly.com

610-313-8113 @mccabe_caitlin

Staff writers Mensah M. Dean, Melanie Burney, Jan Hefler, Stacey Burling, and Samantha Melamed contributed to this article.