Catt, Carrie Chapman, 1859-1947

At this time, Catt was engaged in finding homes for Jewish refugees escaping from the Nazis.

In August 1933, Carrie Chapman Catt announced the establishment of the Protest Committee of Non-Jewish Women Against the Persecution of Jews in Germany. At the time of that announcement, over 9,000 women had signed the committee’s official protest statement, which was disseminated internationally and to the League of Nations. In recognition of her efforts, Eleanor Roosevelt presented Catt with the American Hebrew Medal in November of the same year.

Leader in the woman suffrage and international peace movements, Catt succeeded Susan B. Anthony as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and was president when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted. She was also president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, helped found the League of Women Voters of the U.S., and helped organize and chaired the National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War.

President, National American Woman Suffrage Association; was instrumental in assisting Tennessee women in the fight for passage of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Carrie Chapman Catt, leader in the woman suffrage and international peace movements, succeeded Susan B. Anthony as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1900-1904) and was again president when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted. She was also president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, helped found the League of Woman Voters of the U.S., and helped organize and chaired the National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War. For additional biographical information, see Notable American Women, 1607-1950 (1971).

Leader in the woman suffrage and international peace movements, Catt succeeded Susan B. Anthony as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and was again president when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted. She was also president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, helped found the League of Women Voters of the U.S., and helped organize and chaired the National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War.

New York, N.Y. resident.

Epithet: widow of G W Catt, Chairman National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War USA

Feminist, lecturer, and author.

Catt was an American author.

Leader in the women's suffrage and international peace movements, Catt succeeded Susan B. Anthony as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and was president when the 19th amendment to the Constitution was adopted. She was also president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, helped found the League of Women Voters of the U.S., and helped organize and chaired the National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War.

Anne O'Hare McCormick (1882-1954), journalist and newspaper editor, spent most of her career at the New York Times. She began as a foreign correspondent in 1922 reporting from the U.S. and Europe. She became well known for her interviews with world leaders and in 1936 became the first woman to be appointed to the Times editorial board. McCormick received the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism in 1937 and served as a member of the U.S. delegation to the first and third UNESCO conferences.

Carrie Chapman Catt (1859-1947) was an American suffragist, peace activist and lecturer.

A leader in the women's suffrage movement, Carrie (Lane) Chapman Catt was born in Ripon, Wisconsin, and lived in Charles City, Iowa as a child. After graduating from Iowa State College in Ames, Iowa, she worked as a teacher and in 1883 superintendent of schools in Mason City, Iowa. She became involved in promoting women's suffrage in the 1880s and served two terms as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) from 1900 to 1904 and from 1915 to 1920. In 1920, Catt founded the League of Women Voters as a successor to NAWSA.

"One of longshore girls driving an auto truck." Photo by Underwood and Underwood, 1917

Carrie Lane Chapman Catt was born on January 9, 1859 in Ripon, Wisconsin, the second of three children of Lucius Lane and Maria Clinton. When Carrie was seven years old the family moved to Charles City, Iowa, where she spent the rest of her childhood. She taught at a country school until she saved enough money to pay for college, and entered Iowa State College in 1877. In 1880, following her graduation, she studied law before becoming principal of the high school in Mason City, Iowa. She later became the first female superintendent of the district.

In 1885, Catt married Leo Chapman, editor-owner of the Mason City Republican, which she helped him manage. Following his death in 1886, she was employed in the newspaper business in San Francisco, where she became increasingly aware of the inequalities facing women in the business and industrial arenas. Leaving San Francisco less than a year later, she returned to Iowa where she began lecturing on the status of women in the United States. Catt was convinced that women's inequality was based on their lack of political power, and she focused her efforts on women's suffrage. She joined the Iowa Woman Suffrage Association and was elected State Organizer in 1887. In 1890 she was invited to address the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in Washington, D.C., where she met important suffrage activists, among them Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Julia Ward Howe. Following the convention, she married George W. Catt, a successful hydraulic engineer. When Susan B. Anthony retired as president of NAWSA in 1900, she named Catt her successor. Catt used her position to forge new alliances with women across the world, calling an international suffrage conference in 1902. The conference was attended by representatives from nine countries and led to the founding of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. By the time Catt retired as president of NAWSA twenty-one years later, forty countries had branches of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance and twenty of these had enfranchised women fully.

After 1904, when she was forced to step down from the NAWSA presidency because of her husband's poor health, Catt turned her attention to achieving suffrage in New York State, which she felt was critical to passage of a federal suffrage amendment. Due largely to her efforts, which included consolidating disparate city groups into the Woman Suffrage Party (1910), and organizing and chairing the Empire State Campaign (1913-14), in 1917 the New York State Legislature finally passed a referendum granting women the right to vote.

From this point, the struggle for national women's suffrage became more intense and Catt was an increasingly charismatic symbol of the movement. During World War One she was asked to take on the presidency of NAWSA once again, in part to facilitate keeping the idea of women's suffrage in the forefront of American politics. As a member of the Woman's Division of the Council for National Defense, she was able to push Congress to submit the Nineteenth Amendment in June of 1919, and on August 26, 1920, the federal amendment granting women's suffrage was signed into law. After suffrage was won, Catt founded the National League of Women Voters to help newly-enfranchised women navigate the election process.

Throughout the rest of her life, Catt worked tirelessly for pacifism, disarmament, and the peaceful settlement of international disputes, most notably by attempting to create a common international program of peace. In 1925, she invited international women's organizations to work together to form a disarmament program at the First Conference on the Cause and Cure of War in Washington, D.C. At this conference, a permanent Committee on the Cause and Cure of War was formed, comprised of the chief officers of the member organizations. Catt served as chairman until 1933, when she retired. The committee specialized in "marathon round tables" for the study of international conflicts.

In addition to being a prolific writer of editorials, speeches and pamphlets on the women's movement, she collaborated with Nettie Rogers Shuler in writing Woman Suffrage and Politics (1923) and on her own wrote a book, Why Wars Must Cease (1935).

Catt was given honorary doctorates from the University of Wyoming, Iowa State College, Smith College, and Moravian College for Women. In 1936, during her fiftieth anniversary celebration as a suffragist and pacifist, she was escorted to the White House by the presidents of several national women's organizations where President and Mrs. Roosevelt received her.

In 1940, Catt organized the last event of her career, the Woman's Centennial Conference in New York, which celebrated the first one hundred years of the feminist movement in the United States. Carrie Chapman Catt died at home in New Rochelle, New York on March 9, 1947 at age 88. Carrie Chapman Catt Papers 3

Suffragist; President, National American Women Suffrage Association; Pacifist.

Born in Ripon, Wisconsin, 1859. Received B.S., Iowa State College, 1880. Married Leo Chapman, 1884 (died 1886); married George Catt, 1890. Began working with the National American Women Suffrage Association, 1890, and served as president, 1900-04 and 1915-20. Was also president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1904-23, and helped found the National League of Women Voters in 1919. In 1923, she wrote "Women Suffrage and Politics" with Nettie R. Sholer. From the 1920s until her death in 1947, Catt was active in the peace movement. She organized and served as chair (1925-32) of the National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War.

Carrie Lane Chapman Catt, suffragist, early feminist, political activist, and Iowa State alumna (1880), was born on January 9, 1859 in Ripon, Wisconsin to Maria Clinton and Lucius Lane. At the close of the Civil War, the Lanes moved to a farm near Charles City, Iowa where they remained throughout their lives. Carrie entered Iowa State College in 1877 completing her work in three years. She graduated at the top of her class and while in Ames established military drills for women, became the first woman student to give an oration before a debating society, earned extra money as assistant to the librarian, and was a member of Pi Beta Phi. After graduation she became the high school principal in Mason City and then in 1883 the superintendent of Mason City Schools. In this capacity she met Leo Chapman, editor of the Mason City Republican, and they married in February 1885.

After her husband's death in 1886, she spent some time in California as a newspaper reporter and then returned to Iowa to begin her crusade for women's suffrage. She was president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association from 1900-1904 and from 1915 until its goal was reached. She also formed and was president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance for many years. When the women's vote was attained in 1920 Mrs. Catt looked ahead and encouraged the formation of a non-partisan group, the League of Women Voters, a group still viable today. Early in her suffrage work she ran into a classmate from Ames, George W. Catt. They were married in 1890 and until his death in October 1905, he supported his wife's work through his engineering company financially and through his personal support of suffrage.

Carrie attained much recognition for her work throughout her life and received many awards such as the Chi Omega in 1941, the Pictorial Review Award for her international disarmament work in 1931, and induction into the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame. She donated her entire estate to her alma mater, where she was the first woman to deliver the commencement address. She died in March 1947 at her home in New Rochelle, New York.

Biographical Note