She "led an army of voteless women in 1919 to pressure Congress to pass the constitutional amendment giving them the right to vote and convinced state legislatures to ratify it in 1920".

[7] Catt was also a member of Pi Beta Phi,[8] started an all girls' debate club, and advocated for women's participation in military drills.

[38] Catt made the controversial decision to support the war effort, which shifted the public's perception in favor of the suffragists, who were now perceived as patriotic.

She wrote to the Woman Citizen, "Never in the history of politics has there been such a force for evil, such a nefarious lobby as labored to block the advance of suffrage in Nashville, Tenn. ...

On a single trip around the world from departure from New York on April 1, 1911, to arrival in San Francisco on November 4, 1912, Catt spoke and/or organized women's suffrage organizations in South Africa (Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, Pretoria and a Kaffir kraal in Maritzburg); up the east coast of Africa to Zanzibar, Tanzania and Port Said; Egypt; then on to Jericho, Jordan, Riyaq and Beirut, Lebanon, and to Cairo, where she departed for Ceylon; then India, starting in Agra and leaving the continent in Rangoon, Myanmar (Burma).

The 1920 meeting took place in Geneva and more than 400 women met, including delegates from Germany, France, Japan, China, India and the United States.

Catt founded the League of Women Voters on February 14, 1920 – six months before the ratification of the 19th Amendment – during the annual convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in Chicago, Illinois.

[57] The 1920 convention marked the completion of NAWSA's work, except for a small board to make final disposition of records and assets, and the beginning of the League of Women Voters.

[58] During the 1920 convention, Catt honored pioneers of the movement – including past NAWSA presidents Anna Howard Shaw and Susan B. Anthony – for their "ever buoyant hope" and "unswerving courage and determination."

Catt continued that the League "must be nonpartisan and all partisan" in leading the way – ahead of the political parties – to educate for citizenship and get legislation passed.

National's parting gift to Catt was funded by thousands of individual contributions – including dimes, nickels and even pennies – from public subscription.

Upon the outbreak of World War I in 1915, a group of women pacifists in the United States began talking about the need to form an organization to help bring the conflict to an end.

[63] On February 25, 1917, by a vote of 63 to 18, NAWSA – with Catt as its president – offered the women's services to the government of the United States "in the event they should be needed, and in so far as we are authorized, we pledge the loyal support of our more than two million members."

The position paper from NAWSA with Catt as its president led to her ejection from the Woman's Peace Party as well as hard feelings between her and its small cohort of pacifists.

[70] In 1933, in response to Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Catt organized the Protest Committee of Non-Jewish Women Against the Persecution of Jews in Germany.

[77] In the 1890s, when she was active in NAWSA but before becoming president, Catt made public speeches that referred to the "ignorant foreign vote,"[18] and pointed to Native American men's lack of knowledge of representative government.

[78] In the same speeches, Catt blamed, variously, political corruption,[18] a lack of education,[17] or the tragic vestiges of slavery[78] for these groups' shortcomings as voters.

When pressed for the source of his allegations about Catt's views on interracial marriage, Candler had to admit he stretched the truth a bit, connected dots in a most haphazard way.

And there will never be a true democracy until every responsible and law-abiding adult in it, without regard to race, sex, color or creed has his or her own inalienable and unpurchasable voice in the government.

[88] Similarly, in separate letters written in May 1919, Catt assured the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)[89] and two African American suffragists from Kentucky"[90] that NAWSA opposed any effort to limit the vote to white women only.

[91] In her 1909 address to ISWA, Catt stated, "...our task will not be fulfilled until the women of the whole world have been rescued from those discriminations and injustices which in every land are visited upon them in law and custom.

[101] She also protested a Washington, D.C. hotel's policy of excluding African Americans, which precluded them from participating in a NCCCW conference,[102] and spoke out about the plight of Jewish refugees escaping Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

[20][105] African American suffragist Mary Church Terrell memorialized Catt in a telegram: "The whole world has lost a great, good, and gifted woman who, for many years, pleaded with it to deal justly with all human beings without regard to sex, race, or religion.

[114] In 1947, the national League established the Carrie Chapman Catt Memorial Fund, which promoted suffrage aboard, voter education, and the responsibilities of citizenship.

[120] The League of Women Voters of Iowa also bestows a Carrie Chapman Catt Award annually, recognizing the significant accomplishments of one of its members.

For instance, no women were allowed to vote in Georgia or Mississippi in 1920 because state legislatures were not called into special session to pass the enabling legislation.

[173] After a sixty-day public comment period, university president Wendy Wintersteen formally accepted the recommendation that the name of Carrie Chapman Catt Hall not be changed.

The Catt Center conducts research on women in politics, with a special emphasis on Iowa, and promotes civic engagement on campus and in the community.

[178] As part of the centennial celebration of the Nineteenth Amendment in 2020, Catt was featured in newspaper and magazine articles; recent books, such as Elaine Weiss's The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote (2018),[46] which is being made into a film with Hillary Rodham Clinton as the executive producer; the PBS American Experience two-part documentary The Vote; and the Iowa PBS documentary, Carrie Chapman Catt: Warrior for Women.

[199] Catt is also the subject of a one-woman play, The Yellow Rose of Suffrage, by Jane Cox, professor emerita of theatre at Iowa State University.