The Library of Congress Needs Your Help Transcribing Suffragist Papers

Thanks to Pam P for sending this in!

n 1922, the American suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt traveled to Italy to help prepare for the upcoming Congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in Rome. Back home, Catt was a towering figure of the women’s rights movement; she had succeeded Susan B. Anthony as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and played a pivotal role in securing the adoption of the 19th Amendment, which granted American women the right to vote. Catt was an efficient and effective organizer—and she was not entirely impressed with the way things were taking shape in Rome.

“A more unpromising place for a Congress I never saw,” she recorded in her diaries, describing the venue where the event was due to take place. “The Italian women could not comprehend our disapproval.”