Carrie Chapman Catt's Biography (PDF)

# Carrie Chapman Catt ## January 9, 1859 - March 9, 1947 **WE WOMEN DEMAND AN EQUAL VOICE; WE SHALL ACCEPT NOTHING LESS.** Carrie Lane had an early interest in politics. Raised on a farm in Iowa, she went with her father to campaign rallies for Horace Greeley, who was running for president agains...

# Carrie Chapman Catt ## January 9, 1859 - March 9, 1947 **WE WOMEN DEMAND AN EQUAL VOICE; WE SHALL ACCEPT NOTHING LESS.** Carrie Lane had an early interest in politics. Raised on a farm in Iowa, she went with her father to campaign rallies for Horace Greeley, who was running for president against Ulysses S. Grant in 1872. When her cat had a litter of kittens, Carrie named them for Greeley, Grant, and their running mates! On Election Day, Carrie's father, brother, and farmhands hitched up a wagon to head for town. Carrie was puzzled that her mother wasn't getting ready to go. "Why, Mother, aren't you going to vote for Greeley?" she asked. At that, everyone laughed. Everyone but Carrie knew that women couldn't vote. After finishing high school, Carrie passed her college exams and earned her teaching certificate-all without telling her parents. She'd read Charles Darwin's new book, *On the Origin of Species*, and was convinced that humans could evolve in moral and intellectual ways, becoming ever higher beings. She was sure college would help her evolve. At Iowa State College, Carrie was struck by the college's military-style training program for men. Women weren't offered any physical activity. She convinced the college to let her start "G Company," which gave girls an opportunity for exercise. She also defied the rule that allowed only men to speak in the debate club. Upon graduating in 1880, Carrie was offered a job as principal of a school in Mason City, Iowa. When she arrived, they told her they could only offer her the assistant principal's job. Carrie was defiant-she said she'd take the top job or nothing. They gave her the promised position. ## Women Arise: Demand the VOTE! The image depicts a map of the united states with the word "SUFFRAGE" written in large letters. A small book is on the map labeled "On the Origin of Species". In the bottom right corner, a group of people march in a line holding signs that say "VOTE". In the center of the image, a woman sits at a desk reading a book. An older woman's face appears in the upper left corner. ## Carrie knew success Carrie knew success would only come with a wide base of support, so she got creative about spreading the suffrage message. Suffragists shouted their views from soapboxes in the street. On Mother's Day, they pressured preachers to give pro-suffrage sermons. On the Fourth of July, suffragists read the Declaration of Sentiments from courthouse steps. On Labor Day, they enlisted labor leaders to speak at workers' picnics. They tacked up posters in store windows and traipsed across fields to talk to farmers. They flung leaflets from biplanes. One artist attracted crowds by sketching while she promoted suffrage. Another woman spoke between bouts at a prize fight in Madison Square Garden. Carrie made sure the newspapers knew about every stunt. Suffragists were mocked as bitter, ugly "she-men." They were often depicted in cartoons looking like "escapers from the insane asylums." One vile sideshow entertainer exhibited a four-hundred-pound teenage girl as a supposed specimen of how women would look if they had rights. So it is fitting that one of their most successful tactics was the "suffrage cafe." Attractive young women circulated among patrons at these pop-up restaurants, serving up lunch with a side of suffrage propaganda. In 1885, she married Leo Chapman, the editor of the Mason City newspaper, and became its coeditor. When Leo died of typhoid fever in California the next year, Carrie moved there and took another newspaper job. Returning to Iowa a year later, she took her third job in journalism. Yet just as women do today, she suffered sexual harassment in the workplace-she had to fight off men when they tried to "scrape acquaintance" with her. When Carrie returned to Iowa in 1887, she began campaigning for women's right to vote in local elections. Invited to a statewide suffrage meeting in 1889, she was intrigued by a quiet, gray-haired woman in a lace cap-it was Lucy Stone. Carrie came on the suffrage scene just when suffragists were becoming discouraged. They couldn't convince states to adopt suffrage or lawmakers to consider the federal amendment. Carrie energized the flagging movement with her gift for organizing and ability to mobilize groups, especially young people. She was a tall, dignified woman with a full-throated voice perfect for speech-making. "I have a voice like a foghorn!" she used to say. People paid attention to Carrie. In 1900, when she became president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, she pinned a map of the United States on her office wall. It was color-coded to show the states in which women had full suffrage and could vote in all local and national elections, those in which a limited suffrage allowed them to vote in some local or congressional elections, and states that had no woman suffrage at all. She wanted to see full suffrage splashed across the map. "We women demand an equal voice; we shall accept nothing less," she declared. She resigned as NAWSA president in 1904 to promote world suffrage, but her resignation was also personal-her second husband, George Catt, was dying. He was a huge supporter of her work, and she was heartbroken. "My husband needs me now... and I will not leave him," she said. But the national effort sagged again, and NAWSA called her back in 1915. The next year, Carrie organized an emergency convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to revive the dying movement. "The Woman's Hour has struck!" she declared. "Women arise: Demand the vote!" Part of Carrie's "Winning Plan" was to gain suffrage in New York State. On October 23, 1915, she led a parade of fifty thousand people down Fifth Avenue. Finally, people seemed to understand the depth of the suffragists' passion. "This is not a movement; it is not a campaign; this is a crusade!" one man said. It took two more years, but in 1917, New York granted women the vote. By 1919, fifteen states had granted women full suffrage, and in another twenty states, women could vote in school board or local elections. Carrie's skillful political activism pushed suffrage over its final hurdles. Her drive for state-by-state suffrage and later for the federal amendment endured setback after setback, but because of her, millions of people joined the fight, legislators reversed course, and President Woodrow Wilson, who had been on the fence, finally urged Congress to back the amendment. When on June 4, 1919, the Nineteenth Amendment finally made it through Congress, Carrie's was the loudest voice of triumph. "You've won! Be glad! Rejoice, applaud and be glad!" she cried. And in August 1920, when the states voted to add the amendment to the Constitution, Carrie again spoke for the nation's women. "We are no longer petitioners, we are not wards of the nation but free and equal citizens." Suffragists honored Carrie with the gift of a sapphire-and diamond-studded brooch. Teachers asked children to bring pennies to school for the pin. One boy asked his puzzled mother for a penny for "Charlie Chaplin's cat"!