Bettina Aptheker on Carrie Chapman Catt

“However badgered by political winds, the suffrage women in NAWSA were committed to winning a federal amendment. Under the presiding genius of Carrie Chapman Catt, an extraordinary campaign to secure congressional approval of the Nineteenth Amendment and its state-by-state ratification was started in 1913 with the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. Catt's "winning plan," as it was called, was a precise strategy with specific goals and dates, legislative details on individual men and their voting patterns in Congress and in every state. Catt and NAWSA also launched a drive to build an extensive network of state and local suffrage organizations. Coincident with Wilson's inauguration, thousands of women massed in Washington, D.C., for an impressive march up Pennsylvania Avenue. Although attacked by a mob of white men, the women proceeded undaunted.”

“NAWSA now redoubled its efforts for the legislative battles in the respective states where ratification required a three-fourths majority. After the final victory in August 1920, Carrie Chapman Catt summarized the meaning of their labor and the suffrage victory: "It is doubtful if any man, even among suffrage men, ever realized what the suffrage struggle came to mean before the end was allowed in America. How much of time and patience, how much work, energy and aspiration, how much faith, how much hope, how much despair went into it. It leaves its mark on one, such a struggle. It fills the days and rides the nights. Working, eating, drinking, sleeping it is there. Not all women in all the States of the Union were in the struggle. There were some women in every State of the Union who knew nothing about it. But most women in all the States were at least on the periphery of its effort and interest when they were not in the heart of it. To them all its success became a monumental thing."”