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Carrie Chapman Catt

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Carrie Chapman Catt
Born
Carrie Clinton Lane

(1859-01-09)January 9, 1859
Ripon, Wisconsin
DiedMarch 9, 1947(1947-03-09) (aged 88)
New Rochelle, New York

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 Association and 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".[1]

Early life

Catt in 1897.

Born Carrie Clinton Lane in Ripon, Wisconsin to Lucius and Maria Louisa (Clinton) Lane, Catt spent her childhood in Charles City, Iowa. As a child Catt was interested in science and wanted to become a doctor. After graduating from high school she enrolled at Iowa State Agricultural College (now Iowa State University) in Ames, Iowa, graduating in three years.[2] Prior to her attendance at Iowa State College, men dominated most clubs and women were not able to participate. Catt sought to establish clubs that were open to women. In doing so, Catt created an all girls version of the debate club and also fought to enable women to participate in “military drill.”[3] After a 3-year period, Catt graduated from Iowa State College with a bachelor’s degree in Science in November 1880. [4] She was a member of Pi Beta Phi, as well as the valedictorian and only woman in her class.[5] She became a teacher and then superintendent of schools in Mason City, Iowa in 1885. She was the first female superintendent of the district.[6]

In 1885 Carrie married newspaper editor Leo Chapman, but he died in California 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. Catt also joined the Women's Christian Temperance Union.

Role in women's suffrage

National American Woman Suffrage Association

Catt became a close colleague of Susan B. Anthony, who selected Catt 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 Catt's leadership the movement focused on success in at least one eastern state, because previous to 1917 only western states had granted female suffrage. Catt 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. Catt 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 August 26, 1920.[7]

In her efforts to win women's suffrage state by state, Catt sometimes appealed to the prejudices of the time. In South Dakota, Catt 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."[8] In 1894, Catt 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."[9] "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.[10]

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, Catt 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, Catt retired from NAWSA.[11]

International women's suffrage movement

Catt 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.[12]

Catt was also a leader of the international women's suffrage movement.[13] 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.

Juniper Ledge
File:CCattHomeNew Rochelle1920.PNG
Catt's home in Paine Heights section of New Rochelle

Role during the World Wars

Catt was active in anti-war causes during the 1920s and 1930s. Catt resided at Juniper Ledge in the Westchester County, New York community of Briarcliff Manor from 1919 through 1928 [14] when she settled in nearby New Rochelle, New York. 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, Catt organized the Protest Committee of Non-Jewish Women Against the Persecution of Jews in Germany.[15]

The group sent a letter of protest to Hitler in August 1933 signed by 9,000 non-Jewish American women.[16] It decried acts of violence and restrictive laws against German Jews. Catt pressured the U.S. government to ease immigration laws so that Jews could more easily take refuge in America. For her efforts, she became the first woman to receive the American Hebrew Medal.[15][17]

The last event she helped organize was the Women's Centennial Congress in New York in 1940, a celebration of the feminist movement in the United States.[6]

Death and recognition

Carrie Chapman Catt grave in Woodlawn Cemetery

On March 9, 1947, Catt died of a heart attack in her home in New Rochelle. She was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York.[18]

In 1975, Catt became the first inductee into the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame.[18] In 1982, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. In 1992, the Iowa Centennial Memorial Foundation named her one of the ten most important women of the century.[18] The same year, Iowa State University established the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics and in 1995, the university named a building in her honor.[18] In 2013. she was one of the first four women to be honored on the Iowa Women of Achievement Bridge in Des Moines.[18]

Controversy

Catt has been at the center of many controversial topics. In 1895, Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote The Woman's Bible, a book about challenging the traditional religious beliefs of Catholics that women are to be passive and inferior to men.[19] This did not sit well with the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Rachel Foster Avery, the corresponding secretary of the NAWSA at the time, she believed that The Woman's Bible would work against the women’s suffragist efforts. She argued that the organization was made up of women with various religious views and opinions; therefore, she did not want the organization to be associated with one particular view.[19] She made sure to put distance between the NAWSA and Stanton’s Woman's Bible. Catt was one of the new leaders within the NAWSA. She agreed with Avery and supported her efforts to put distance between the two. Catt agreed that The Woman's Bible would alienate orthodox members of the organization, which posed a serious threat to work of the women’s movement.[19] During the annual NAWSA convention in January, 1896, Avery called for a resolution. The resolution was passed 54 to 41.[19] Many of the supporters of Avery included, Catt, Anna Howard Shaw, Henry Browne Blackwell, Alice Stone Blackwell, and others.[19] This resolution caused a rift within NAWSA because Susan B. Anthony, who was the president at the time, supported Stanton. There was question surrounding whether or not the two should or would resign; however, they did not resign until later years.[19]

Some historians[who?] consider Catt’s arguments and her stance on rights for women to be representative of white women only and find some of her arguments and remarks to be racist. While fighting for women’s rights around America, she made comments such as “White supremacy will be strengthened, not weakened, by women’s suffrage” and while speaking about suffrage for other ethnic groups, she referred to Indians as “savages”.[20] Debra Marquart, a professor at Iowa State University, argues that “Carrie Chapman Catt is not a woman of our time, and therefore, we cannot hold her to the standards of our time.”[21]

Catt's language resulted in a controversy at Iowa State University, the school from which she graduated. One student, who declared that the name of Catt Hall was offensive to black students,[21] engaged in a hunger strike to pressure the university to negotiate the renaming of the building.[21] He objected to Catt's statement that the only way to achieve a dominant white class was by allowing women to become “enfranchised”.[21] The Ames chapter of the NAACP also objected to the building name.[20]

Catt was played by Anjelica Huston in the 2004 film Iron Jawed Angels.

See also

References

  1. ^ Voris, Jacqueline Van (1996). Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life. Women and Peace Series. New York City: Feminist Press at CUNY. p. vii. ISBN 1558611398. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |month= (help)
  2. ^ Peck, Mary Gray. Carrie Chapman Catt: A Biography (1944), 30-32
  3. ^ Peck, Mary Gray. Carrie Chapman Catt: A Biography (1944), 33.
  4. ^ Peck, Mary Gray. Carrie Chapman Catt: A Biography (1944), 34.
  5. ^ "Carrie Lane Chapman Catt". Traditions. ISU Alumni Association. Archived from the original on May 4, 2013. Retrieved December 14, 2013.
  6. ^ a b "Carrie Chapman Catt Papers, 1880-1958". Five College Archives & Manuscript Collections. Five College Consortium. Retrieved 23 July 2014.
  7. ^ Sara M. Evans. Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America. New York: The Free Press, 1989. pp. 164-172.
  8. ^ Van Voris, Jacqueline (1996). Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life. Feminist Press at CUNY. p. 21.
  9. ^ Bredbenner, Candice Lewis (1998). A Nationality of Her Own: Women, Marriage, and the Law of Citizenship. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 48.
  10. ^ Munns, Roger (May 5, 1996). "University Honors Suffragette Despite Racism Charge". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2 September 2013. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  11. ^ United States Congress, Office of the Historian. Women in Congress, 1917-1990. Washington, DC: U.S. G.P.O., 1991, p. 208.
  12. ^ Excerpt from The Corruption of Economics by Mason Gaffney
  13. ^ Nate Levin. Carrie Chapman Catt: A Life of Leadership. 2006, p. 62.
  14. ^ Peter D. Shaver (October 2003). "National Register of Historic Places Registration:Carrie Chapman Catt House". New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Retrieved 2010-12-24.
  15. ^ a b Recker, Cristen. "Carrie Chapman Catt". Ladies For Liberty. Retrieved April 2, 2011.
  16. ^ Nasaw, David (2001). The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 489. ISBN 0-618-15446-9.
  17. ^ James, Edward T.; James, Janet Wilson (1974). Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary. Harvard University Press. p. 312. ISBN 0-674-62734-2.
  18. ^ a b c d e Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics. "Timeline of Carrie Chapman Catt’s Life".
  19. ^ a b c d e f Lisa S. Strange. "Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Woman's Bible and the Roots of Feminist Theology". Gender Issues, vol. 17, no. 4 (Fall 1999): 15-36.
  20. ^ a b "Suffragette's Racial Remark Haunts College". The New York Times, May 5, 1996. Retrieved November 15, 2014.
  21. ^ a b c d "Catt Fight at Iowa State". The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, no. 18 (Winter, 1997-1998), 73-74.

Further reading

  • Fowler, Robert Booth. Carrie Catt: Feminist Politician (1986). ISBN 9781555530051
  • Peck. Mary Gray. Carrie Chapman Catt: A Biography (1944).
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Carrie Chapman Catt.
Wikisource has the text of a 1921 Collier's Encyclopedia article about Carrie Chapman Catt.

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