Carrie Chapman Catt 1859–1947

Susan B. Anthony groomed Carrie Chapman Catt to lead the suffrage movement. Catt was a brilliant organizer who, after attending her first meeting in 1890, soon became indispensable to the National American Woman Suffrage Association. From 1868 on, suffragists conducted, in Catt’s estimation,“56 campaigns of referenda to male voters; 480 campaigns to urge Legislatures to submit suffrage amendments to voters; 47 campaigns to induce State constitutional conventions to write woman suffrage into State constitutions; 277 campaigns to persuade State party conventions to include woman suffrage planks; 30 campaigns to urge presidential party conventions to adopt woman suffrage planks in party platforms, and 19 campaigns with 19 successive Congresses.” After 909 campaigns conducted by three generations of women, Catt led the last charge. She organized campaigns to gain the necessary approvals from thirty-six states, including the final one in Tennessee.

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of University Women’s Club, Inc.