Carrie Chapman Catt
Carrie Chapman Catt was born on January 9, 1859, in Ripon, Wisconsin.
She graduated from College at the top of her class, having worked
her way through school by washing dishes, working in the school
library, and teaching. She was also the only woman in her graduating
class. She worked as a schoolteacher and a principal and in 1883,
she became one of the first women in the nation appointed superintendent
of schools. She moved to San Francisco, California where she became
the city’s first female newspaper reporter. She then returned
to Charles City and joined the Iowa Woman Suffrage Association
for whom she worked as a professional writer and lecturer. After
a short period of time, she became the group’s recording
secretary. From 1890 to 1892, she served as the Iowa association’s
state organizer.
Catt also began work nationally for the National American Woman
Suffrage Association (NAWSA), speaking in 1890 at its Washington,
D.C., convention. In the following months, her work, her writing
and her speaking engagements, established her reputation as a leading
suffragist. In 1892, she was asked by Susan B. Anthony to address
Congress on the proposed suffrage amendment. In 1900, she succeeded
Anthony as NAWSA president. From then on, her time was spent primarily
in speechmaking, planning campaigns, organizing women, and gaining
political experience. She helped organize the International Woman
Suffrage Alliance (IWSA), which eventually incorporated sympathetic
associations in 32 nations. In 1904, she resigned her NAWSA presidency
only to return to the presidency in 1915.
In 1916, at a NAWSA convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Catt
unveiled her "Winning Plan" to campaign simultaneously
for suffrage on both the state and federal levels, and to compromise
for partial suffrage in the states resisting change. Under her
dynamic leadership, NAWSA won the backing of the U.S. House and
Senate, as well as state support for the amendment’s ratification.
In 1917, New York passed a state woman suffrage referendum, and
by 1918, President Woodrow Wilson was finally converted to the
cause. On August 26, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment officially
became part of the United States Constitution. One hundred forty-four
years after U.S. independence, all women in the United States were
at last guaranteed the right to vote.
Stepping down from the NAWSA presidency after its victory, Catt
continued her work for equal suffrage, promoting education of the
newly-enfranchised by founding the new League of Women Voters and
serving as its honorary president for the rest of her life. In
her later years, Catt’s interests broadened to include the
causes of world peace and child labor. She founded the National
Committee on the Cause and Cure of War in 1925, serving as its
chair until 1932 and as honorary chair thereafter. She also supported
the League of Nations and, later, the United Nations.
Honored and praised by countless institutions for her more than
half-century of public service, Carrie Chapman Catt’s life
was dedicated to working to oppose prejudice, discrimination, and
oppression based on the philosophy of nonviolence. She is truly
an inspirational person whose undying spirit is exemplified in
her life’s work.
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