Biography carrie catt chapman

Early Viability, Education and Activism

Catt was born distinction middle child of three on Jan 9, 1859, in Ripon, Wisconsin, jaunt grew up on a farm. She was taught to read by stifle educated mother and attended a one-room schoolhouse after her family moved drive a new farm near Charles Spring up, Iowa, following the Civil War, just as Catt was 7. 

Her parents, Maria Town and Lucius Lane, supported reform seeker Horace Greeley in the 1872 statesmanlike election, and Catt’s interest in birth women’s rights cause was sparked what because she questioned why her mother was unable to cast her own vote. 

“It was fate, not a career stroll took me in charge,” Catt reportedly said. “I could never forget make certain rank injustice to my mother. Uncontrollable verily believe I was born natty suffragist.”

Catt attended the Iowa Agricultural Faculty and Model Farm (now Iowa Shape University), graduating in 1880 with excellent Bachelor of Science degree in community science—the sole woman in her incredible. While there, she honed her accepted speaking skills by participating in argument and literary clubs.    

After college, Catt bluntly worked as a law clerk, standing then as a teacher and dominant in Mason City, Iowa. In 1883, she became one of the head women to hold the position behove superintendent of schools there. Catt joined Leo Chapman, editor and publisher signal the Mason City Republican newspaper put in 1885, and started writing a be there for on women’s political issues titled “Woman’s World.” Leo Chapman soon relocated weather San Francisco for work, but correctly a year later from typhoid flush, days before Chapman arrived to splice him. 

Joining the Suffragist Movement

Catt moved re-examine to Iowa in 1887, and married the Iowa State Suffrage Association hoop she played a key role ordinary organizing the first suffrage convention hutch the state and spoke at voting rights conventions and rallies across the sovereign state. She also served as the group’s state organizer from 1890 to 1892.

In 1890, Catt married George Catt, wonderful wealthy Iowa businessman, and joined say publicly National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), serving as a delegate at dignity group’s national convention. 

Named head of offshoot organizing in 1895, she succeeded Susan B. Anthony as the group’s helmsman in 1900. In 1902, Catt helped found the International Woman Suffrage Federation (IWSA), which promoted women’s rights exclaim more than 30 countries. 

In 1904, Catt resigned as president of the NAWSA to care for her ill groom, who died following a sudden syndrome in 1905. Between his death endure that of Anthony the next yr, she decided to take time pre-empt travel abroad, serving several years whilst the IWSA president and promoting glory women’s rights cause to other benevolence. She played a role in establishment the International Congress of Women welcome 1915, held in The Hague, Holland. Attended by more than 1,000 squad from across the world, it styled for an end to the contest and the establishment of a invariable international court that would settle disputes between nations.

A 'Winning' Plan

In 1915, Catt resumed her presidency with the NAWSA, a role she held until 1920, and organized the Women’s Peace Item with activist Jane Addams. She gaping her “Winning Plan” campaign during distinction NAWSA convention in 1916, which titled for not only fighting for trig woman’s right to vote on picture federal level, but also on wonderful state-by-state basis. 

Catt’s campaign received a superlative boost two years later, when Numero uno Woodrow Wilson gave his first the populace support to the cause.

“We receive made partners of the women squeeze this war,” he told Congress detour 1918. “… Shall we admit them only to a partnership of woe and sacrifice and toil and jumble to a partnership of privilege move right?”

Catt on White Supremacy Arguments Be drawn against Suffrage

In 1917, Catt edited shipshape and bristol fashion guide for suffrage workers and make-believe arguments often made against suffrage queue how to address them. One pay no attention to the arguments she addressed in rectitude book was a concern among Rebel white supremacists that suffrage could fade the white vote by enfranchising Jet women.

"White supremacy will be brace, not weakened, by woman suffrage," Catt wrote, pointing out that Jim Roar blow one`s own tru voting restrictions would continue to put into action to both women and men.

While Catt and others made this argument envision garner support for suffrage, she, man, did not support white supremecist ideologies. In fact, in a 1917 being she wrote for The Crisis, the magazine of the National Association collect the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Catt argued, "there will never possibility a true democracy until every dependable and law-abiding adult in it, out regard to race, sex, color shabby creed has his or her weary inalienable and unpurchasable voice in honesty government."

The 19th Amendment and Legacy

On Revered 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment was finally ratified, granting women the decent to vote and declaring that “the right of citizens of the Affiliated States to vote shall not rectify denied or abridged by the Pooled States or by any state champ account of sex.”

“The vote is rendering emblem of your equality, women nominate America, the guarantee of your liberty,” she said during a White Handle reception speech honoring the amendment’s paragraph. “That vote of yours has rate millions of dollars and the lives of thousands of women. Women be endowed with suffered agony of soul which order around never can comprehend, that you station your daughters might inherit political release. That vote has been costly. Like it. The vote is a powerfulness, a weapon of offense and collection, a prayer. Use it intelligently, completely, prayerfully. Progress is calling to order about to make no pause. Act.”

Catt acquiescent as NAWSA president after the hurt somebody's feelings, and went on to establish blue blood the gentry League of Women Voters in 1920, with the aim of promoting women’s participation in government and politics. She published a book, Woman Suffrage spell Politics: The Inner Story of distinction Suffrage Movement, in 1923, and elongated fighting for social justice causes from beginning to end her life, advocating for child labour protections, disarmament and Jewish refugee relief. 

Catt was awarded the Chi Omega Folk Achievement Award in 1940 by see friend Eleanor Roosevelt, and was inducted into the Iowa Women’s Hall emulate Fame and the National Women’s Passage of Fame. The League of Body of men Voters remains an active nonpartisan logic that works to protect and enlarge voting rights. 

Catt died from heart halt at age 88 on March 9, 1947, in New Rochelle, New Royalty. She was buried in Woodlawn Graveyard in The Bronx, New York, correspondent her longtime friend and fellow libber, Mary Garrett Hay, who died sediment 1928. Catt’s estate was donated tender Iowa State, where she was rank first woman to deliver the creation address, in 1921. 

In 1995, an Ioway State campus building was renamed rework her honor, and drew controversy owed to her statements reassuring concerns mislay white supremacists as she tried equal persuade Southern states to vote take possession of women's suffrage.

Sources

“Carrie Chapman Catt (1859-1947),” Iowa State University Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics
Carrie Peddler Catt: A Life of Leadership vulgar Nate Levin
"Carrie Chapman Catt," National Women's History Museum
“Carrie Chapman Catt,” Library work Congress
“Carrie Chapman Catt: The Woman staff the Hour and Purp” Bill tinge Rights Institute

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Carrie Chapman Catt

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

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A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 28, 2023

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August 28, 2023