Katharine McCormick, American Suffragist and Philanthropist

Katharine Dexter McCormick (August 27, 1875 - December 28, 1967) was an American suffragist and philanthropist. She planned to attend medical school, but instead married Stanley Robert McCormick, heir to the International Harvester fortune, in 1904. In 1906, Stanley was diagnosed with dementia praecox, (schizophrenia). In 1909, he was declared legally incompetent and his guardianship divided between Katharine and the McCormick family. In 1909, Katharine spoke at the first outdoor rally for woman suffrage. She became vice president and treasurer of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, funded the association's publication the Woman's Journal, and organized much of Carrie Chapman Catt's efforts to gain ratification for the 19th Amendment. In 1917, she joined The Committee of 100, a group of women who practiced promoting the legalization of birth control. In 1920, after the 19th Amendment was ratified, McCormick became the vice president of the League of Women Voters. Throughout the 1920s she worked with Sanger on birth control issues and funded most of the research necessary to develop the first birth control pill. McCormick was also an avid supporter of the arts, particularly to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art where she was one of the Museum's founding members, vice president and donor of the Stanley McCormick Gallery in 1942. She died in 1967 in at the age of 92. Bain News Service, 1915-1920

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Bain Dexter Mccormick Philanthropist Suffragist

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