Carrie Chapman Catt (January 9, 1859 – March 9, 1947) was an American women's suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920. Catt served as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Associationand was the founder of the League of Women Voters and the International Alliance of Women. She "led an army of voteless women in 1919 to pressure Congress to pass the constitutional amendment giving them the right to vote and convinced state legislatures to ratify it in 1920" and "was one of the best-known women in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century and was on all lists of famous American women".
Born Carrie Clinton Lane in Ripon, Wisconsin, she spent her childhood in Charles City, Iowa and graduated from Iowa State Agricultural College in Ames, Iowa, graduating in three years. Carrie became a teacher and then superintendent of schools in Mason City, Iowa in 1885 and was the first female superintendent of the district.
In 1885 Carrie married newspaper editor Leo Chapman, but he died soon after. Eventually she landed on her feet, but only after some harrowing experiences in the male working world. In 1890, she married George Catt, a wealthy engineer. Their marriage allowed her to spend a good part of each year on the road campaigning for women's suffrage, a cause she had become involved with in Iowa during the late 1880s. She also joined the Women's Christian Temperance Union.
Carrie became a close colleague of Susan B. Anthony, who selected Carrie to succeed her as head of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). She was elected president of NAWSA twice; her first term was from 1900 to 1904 and her second term was from 1915 to 1920. Her second term coincided with the climax of the women's suffrage movement in the U.S. Under her leadership the movement focused on success in at least one eastern state, because previous to 1917 only western states had granted female suffrage. She thus led a successful campaign in New York state, which finally approved suffrage in 1917. During that same year President Wilson and the Congress entered World War I. Carrie made the controversial decision to support the war effort, which shifted the public's perception in favor of the suffragettes who were now perceived as patriotic. Receiving the support of President Wilson, the suffrage movement culminated in the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on 26 Aug 1920.
In her efforts to win women's suffrage state by state, Carrie sometimes appealed to the prejudices of the time. In South Dakota, she lamented that while women lacked suffrage, "The murderous Sioux is given the right to franchise which he is ready and anxious to sell to the highest bidder." In 1894, she urged that uneducated immigrants be stripped of their right to vote - the United States should "cut off the vote of the slums and give it to woman. White supremacy will be strengthened, not weakened, by women's suffrage," was her argument when trying to win over Mississippi and South Carolina in 1919.
NAWSA was by far the largest organization working for women's suffrage in the U.S. From her first endeavors in Iowa in the 1880s to her last in Tennessee in 1920, Carrie supervised dozens of campaigns, mobilized numerous volunteers (1 million by the end), and made hundreds of speeches. After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, she retired from NAWSA.
Carrie founded the League of Women Voters in 1920 as a successor to NAWSA. In the same year, she ran as the Presidential candidate for the ideologically Georgist Commonwealth Land Party.
She was also a leader of the international women's suffrage movement. She helped to found the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) in 1902, serving as its president from 1904 until 1923. The IWSA remains in existence, now as the International Alliance of Women.
Born Carrie Clinton Lane in Ripon, Wisconsin, she spent her childhood in Charles City, Iowa and graduated from Iowa State Agricultural College in Ames, Iowa, graduating in three years. Carrie became a teacher and then superintendent of schools in Mason City, Iowa in 1885 and was the first female superintendent of the district.
In 1885 Carrie married newspaper editor Leo Chapman, but he died soon after. Eventually she landed on her feet, but only after some harrowing experiences in the male working world. In 1890, she married George Catt, a wealthy engineer. Their marriage allowed her to spend a good part of each year on the road campaigning for women's suffrage, a cause she had become involved with in Iowa during the late 1880s. She also joined the Women's Christian Temperance Union.
Carrie became a close colleague of Susan B. Anthony, who selected Carrie to succeed her as head of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). She was elected president of NAWSA twice; her first term was from 1900 to 1904 and her second term was from 1915 to 1920. Her second term coincided with the climax of the women's suffrage movement in the U.S. Under her leadership the movement focused on success in at least one eastern state, because previous to 1917 only western states had granted female suffrage. She thus led a successful campaign in New York state, which finally approved suffrage in 1917. During that same year President Wilson and the Congress entered World War I. Carrie made the controversial decision to support the war effort, which shifted the public's perception in favor of the suffragettes who were now perceived as patriotic. Receiving the support of President Wilson, the suffrage movement culminated in the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on 26 Aug 1920.
In her efforts to win women's suffrage state by state, Carrie sometimes appealed to the prejudices of the time. In South Dakota, she lamented that while women lacked suffrage, "The murderous Sioux is given the right to franchise which he is ready and anxious to sell to the highest bidder." In 1894, she urged that uneducated immigrants be stripped of their right to vote - the United States should "cut off the vote of the slums and give it to woman. White supremacy will be strengthened, not weakened, by women's suffrage," was her argument when trying to win over Mississippi and South Carolina in 1919.
NAWSA was by far the largest organization working for women's suffrage in the U.S. From her first endeavors in Iowa in the 1880s to her last in Tennessee in 1920, Carrie supervised dozens of campaigns, mobilized numerous volunteers (1 million by the end), and made hundreds of speeches. After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, she retired from NAWSA.
Carrie founded the League of Women Voters in 1920 as a successor to NAWSA. In the same year, she ran as the Presidential candidate for the ideologically Georgist Commonwealth Land Party.
She was also a leader of the international women's suffrage movement. She helped to found the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) in 1902, serving as its president from 1904 until 1923. The IWSA remains in existence, now as the International Alliance of Women.
Carrie was active in anti-war causes during the 1920s and 1930s. It was during this period that she became recognized as one of the most prominent female leaders of her time.
In 1933 in response to Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Carrie organized the Protest Committee of Non-Jewish Women Against the Persecution of Jews in Germany. This group gathered 9,000 signatures of non-Jewish American women and attached these to a letter of protest sent to Hitler in August 1933. The letter decried acts of violence and restrictive laws against German Jews. She pressured the U.S. government to ease immigration laws so that Jews could more easily take refuge in America. For her efforts, Catt became the first woman to receive the American Hebrew Medal. She also wrote the Do You know pamphlet, informing people about Woman Suffrage issues.
The last event Carrie helped organize was the Woman's Centennial Conference in New York in 1940, a celebration of the feminist movement in the United States. She died in New Rochelle in 1947.
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