Katherine Martin, Cape Girardeau suffrage leader

The 1920 Democratic National Convention was the first to occur after women received the vote by passage of the 19th Amendment. One of the delegates was a woman from Cape Girardeau, Mrs. Katherine Martin, who had made her mark at the State Convention by leading the effort to deny Sen. James Reed permission to be a delegate to the national convention. Reed opposed progressive reforms favored by the Democratic Party in Missouri, including U.S. entry into the League of Nations. Mrs. Martin led the attack, which resulted in the State Convention refusing Reed as a delegate by a vote of 1,070 to 90.

Katherine Mavity Martin was born in Paoli, Indiana, on Nov. 20, 1871. She married William Woodrow Martin in 1899, and they worked as educators in several locations while he finished his doctorate. Dr. Martin joined the faculty at the State Normal School in Cape Girardeau in 1905. The family moved to Wisconsin in 1911 to 1913, before Martin returned to Cape as director of the Training School in 1913. The couple built a house at 372 N. Henderson Street.

Katherine was active in the Wednesday Club, joining in 1907 and being elected president the following year. The club was strongly involved in civic life, and began to consider women's suffrage. While the members disagreed on voting for women, they did agree to bring suffragette Jane Addams to speak at Cape in October 1914.

Katherine actively supported suffrage, and by 1917 the club endorsed the idea. By April 1918, she was encouraging the formation of the Cape Girardeau Suffrage Association and convinced many women to join. Shortly after ratification of the 19th Amendment in August 1920, Katherine began her tenure as a convention delegate.

The Martin family moved to Fayette, Missouri, in 1921, where both Dr. and Mrs. Martin were college faculty members. That same year, the Democratic Party selected Katherine as one of seven delegates-at-large to the 1922 Missouri Constitutional Convention. She viewed this service as her most notable achievement. The convention proposed amendments to the State Constitution, which voters failed to approve in 1924.

From Central College, the Martins relocated to Greensboro, North Carolina, where Dr. Martin joined the faculty at the North Carolina College for Women in 1922. Katherine joined the faculty as educational Parent-Teacher extension supervisor, organized Parent-Teacher units, and edited a Parent-Teacher state magazine. She also remained active in the North Carolina Federation of Women's Clubs. On Nov. 16, 1933, Katherine Martin sustained severe injuries in a traffic accident. She lingered for 10 weeks before succumbing Jan. 26, 1934, in Greensboro.

Katherine Martin was the first Cape Girardeau woman to become directly politically active after the passage of the 19th Amendment. As she stated at the 1920 Convention, "Womanhood all over this land is watching this Convention and I suspect many women stay up all night to get bulletins to hear that wonderful thing that you are accepting us into a partnership." Many others of talent were to follow her pioneering example.