Suffrage Work
Katharine’s suffrage activities began to take shape during her time at MIT. In 1900, Boston-area students and recent Radcliffe graduate Maud Wood Park founded the College Equal Suffrage League (CESL). The CESL was created to organize and expand the suffrage movement’s reach among women students. Katharine joined as an early member. After MIT stated the group could not meet on campus, Katharine’s home at 393 Commonwealth Avenue became a meeting place for the budding college suffrage movement.
Although her voting-rights work began as a student at MIT, Katharine quickly became well known in the national movement. By 1907, she represented the College Equal Suffrage League of Massachusetts at the yearly National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) meeting, where she met activists like NAWSA President Anna Howard Shaw. Excited by the cause, she and other MIT graduates joined the 1909 Votes For Women summer tour, speaking to large crowds across Massachusetts, and giving speeches on Boston Common.
On May 21, 1910, she marched with about 10,000 other participants in NAWSA’s first voting rights parade in New York City—the largest parade of its kind in the US at that time. The movement was growing stronger, as was Katharine’s role in it. By the early 1910s, she was the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Alliance’s auditor, NAWSA’s Massachusetts chapter representative, and membership chair of the College Equal Suffrage League (CESL). From her home at 393 Commonwealth Avenue, Katharine recruited college women to join the cause, building a new generation of supporters.
Pamphlets found in Katharine Dexter's Industrial Biology notebook
