Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby (1 August 1846 – 7 September 1916) was a British-American lecturer, newspaper publisher and correspondent, women's rights activist, and suffragist leader.

[1] In 1883, she founded The Woman's Tribune in Beatrice, Nebraska, moving it three years later to Washington, D.C.; it became the country's leading women's suffrage publication.

[3] In addition to being a suffragist and newspaper publisher, Colby was a lecturer, an interpreter of Walt Whitman, and a writer.

She exerted a marked influence in securing the admission of women to the university and the adoption of the principles of co-education in Wisconsin.

She married Leonard Wright Colby, a graduate of the same university, in June 1871, and moved to Beatrice the following year, where he was elected to the Nebraska State Senate.

Amidst the hardships of pioneer life in a new place, the young wife found her family cares all-absorbing, but her taste for study, her love of literature and her natural desire to improve the conditions about her, led her to establish Beatrice's free public library in 1873.

[3] A contemporary and friend of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, Colby lectured extensively not only to general audiences, but before legislative and congressional committees.

She took part in most of the great suffrage campaigns which were carried on in the different states in the effort to secure the franchise by vote of the electors.

[9] During the winters of 1913–15, Colby lectured in Washington on topics such as:[3] Clara married Leonard in 1872 and they removed to Beatrice, Nebraska.

In 1891, Leonard returned home from the Battle of Wounded Knee with a Sioux baby, Zintkala Nuni (Lost Bird) and adopted her; Clara was away at this time, lecturing on suffrage issues.

[10] Her health faded in her final years, and Colby died at her sister's home in Palo Alto in 1916 of pneumonia and myocarditis.