Carrie Chapman Catt Birthday
The founder of the League of Women Voters and a tireless advocate for women’s rights and peace.
As an organizer, Catt was highly effective. In 1900 she was elected to succeed Susan B Anthony as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Between 1905 and 1915 Catt reorganized the NAWSA along political-district lines. An accomplished public speaker herself, she trained women for direct political action and marshaled seasoned campaigners.
Tireless lobbying in Congress and then in state legislatures finally produced a ratified Nineteenth Amendment in August 1920, in large part a tribute to Catt’s imaginative and tactful leadership.
She reorganized the suffrage association ( 2 million strong) into the League of Women Voters six months before the ratification of the 19th Amendment to aid the newly enfranchised women and advocate for legislation throughout the nation.
Catt outlined the framework of the League of Women Voters one year before it became a reality at the National American Women’s Suffrage Association convention in March of 1919.
“Let us raise up a League of Women Voters – the name and form of organization to be determined by the voters themselves; a League that shall be non-partisan and non-sectarian in character and that shall be consecrated to three chief aims:
- To use its utmost influence to secure the final enfranchisement of the women of every state in our own Republic and to reach out across the seas in aid of the women’s struggle for her own in every land.
- To remove the remaining legal discriminations against women in the codes and constitutions of the several states in order that the feet of coming women may find these stumbling blocks removed.
- To make our democracy so safe for the Nation and so safe for the world, that every citizen may feel secure and great men will acknowledge the worthiness of the American Republic to lead.”
In founding the League, she insisted the Presidency go to someone younger, and Maud Wood Park was elected the first President of the League of Women Voters.
