Quick Facts
Biography
Ellen Sullivan Woodward was a federal civil servant and state legislator. She served as director of work relief programs for women organized as part of the Roosevelt administration's New Dealin the 1930s.
The daughter of William Van Amberg Sullivan, an attorney who later served as a congressman from Mississippi and United States senator, and Belle Murray Sullivan, she was born in Oxford, Mississippi. She was educated in Oxford and in Washington, D.C..
In 1906, she married Albert Y. Woodward, an attorney; the couple had one son. Her husband served in the Mississippi House of Representatives. When he died in 1925, she was elected to serve the remainder of his term, becoming the second woman to serve as a representative for the state.
Woodward did not run for reelection. She became director of civic development for the Mississippi State Board of Development, serving as executive director for the board from 1929 to 1933. She was also a delegate to the 1928 Democratic National Convention.
She was director of the Women’s Division of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) from 1933 to 1935; director of the Women’s and Professional Projects of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) from 1935 to 1938; and a member of the three-memberSocial Security Board from 1938 to 1946. She served in advisory roles to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
In 1947 the Women's College of the University of North Carolina awarded Woodward an honorary degree in recognition of her dedication to public welfare in Mississippi, social security in the nation, and domestic and international relief efforts.
In 1946, Woodward was named director of a division in the newly created Federal Security Agency; she retired in December 1953. She died in Washington at the age of 84.
