Becoming a Suffragist

Carrie Chapman Catt said she became a suffragist at age 13 when she noticed her mother wasn’t going to town with her father to vote.

Transcript

National suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt was instrumental in securing the right to vote for women.

She was actively involved in the fight for the right to vote for over 30 years...but some argue that she was a suffragist for much longer.

Jane Cox: Carrie said that she became a suffragist at 13.

And it was a result of the fact that her parents very much wanted Horace Greeley to be elected President.

And so Election Day finally came and Carrie is a young 13 year old girl, was very, very, very excited about that.

She ran into the kitchen where her mother was working to tell her she had to go change her dress because her father was about ready to go into town to vote.

And her father appeared at the door and both her father and her mother laughed about this, that Carrie would think that her mother was going into town to vote too.

And her father replied to her that voting was men's business and it was men's business because men were the only gender who would fight in a war.

And Carrie said, she didn't think that was the real reason, for one thing. And the second thing was that she was going to change that when she grew up because it wasn't a square deal, that was her phrase, it wasn't a square deal that men could vote and women couldn't vote.