"When a just cause reaches its flood-tide, as ours has done in that country, whatever stands in the way must fall before its overwhelming power"
Carrie Chapman
Catt
Facts In Brief
Name: Carrie Lane
Birth Date: January 9, 1859
Birth Location: Wisconsin
Date Of Death: March 9, 1947
Carrie Lane at
the age of seven moved to Iowa where she began preparatory schooling. In
1880 she graduated from Iowa State College at the top of her class. In 1883 she became
one of the first women appointed superintendent of schools.
Carrie Lane married Leo Chapman, editor and publisher of the Mason City Republican in February 1885. While she was on a trip to San Fransisco, Leo contracted typhoid fever. Arriving home a few days after her husband's death, the young widow decided to
return to San Fransisco, where she became the first female reporter.
Chapman returned to Charles City, Iowa, in 1887 and joined the Iowa Women's Suffrage Association. She served the Iowa association as state organizer from 1890 to 1892.
Carrie Chapman married George Catt, a fellow Iowa state alumnus in June of 1890 . George encouraged her suffrage activities. Catt began to work nationally for the National American Suffrage Association. Carrie was asked by Susan B. Anthony to address Congress on the proposed Suffrage Amendment in 1892. Catt assisted in organizing the International Woman's Suffrage Alliance, which began in 1902. Eventually the Alliance
incorporated sympathetic associations in thirty two nations. At the 1916 NAWSA
Convention held in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Catt unveiled her "winning plan". The plan
called for campaigning simultaneously for suffrage on both the federal and state levels, and to comprise for partial
suffrage in the states resisting change.
On August 26, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment finally became part of the United States
Constitution. In 1923 she published Women Suffrage and Politics: The Inner Story of the
Suffrage Movement. Catt's interests broadened in her later years to include the causes of
world peace and child labor. Carrie Chapman Catt died of heart failure in Rochelle, New
York, on March 9, 1947
Bibliography
Encyclopedia of Biography. 1 ed. Vol. 2. N/A, 1998. 430-431
Catt, Carrie Chapman (1859-1947) ; The Hutchinson Dictionary of World History
. 31 Mar. 2001 Carrie Chapman Catt
http://womenshistory.about.com/homework/womenshistory/library/bio/blbio_catt_carrie_chapman.htm.
. 31 Mar. 2001 Carrie Chapman Catt
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/naw/cattbio.html.