Carrie Chapman Catt’s story was relived on Friday night as an ISU professor performed a one-woman play in the Scheman Building.

Jane Cox, associate professor of music, performed an original play called “The Yellow Rose of Suffrage” as a part of the 10th Anniversary of Catt Hall celebration.

The play, finely written and performed by Cox, is a monologue-style biography of Carrie Chapman Catt’s life and her involvement in the fight for women to vote.

The message presented in this play not only informed, but also inspired audience members, says Azhari Rasuman, freshman in pre-computer science.

“The monologue was entertaining and held a powerful message of equality – not only for women, but also for humanity as a whole, as it eventually incited world peace,” Rasuman says. ” ‘The Yellow Rose of Suffrage’ encourages us to think more about helping society rather than helping ourselves.”

Catt, as the audience learned, grew up near Charles City.

She learned at a young age that she would not be inhibited by the stereotypes of her sex. Her discovery is exposed smartly as Cox tells the tale of young boys who used to scare her female classmates by holding garter snakes in their faces.

Catt turns the table on the boys, capturing a garter snake of her own and frightening the boys with it.

Despite hardships while growing up, she attended Iowa Agriculture College (now Iowa State) and succeeded there as the only female in her class. Soon after college, she began teaching and married a newspaper editor named Leo Chapman.

Cox delivers much insight into why Catt kept the names from both of her husbands as she sadly relates the tale of Carrie and Leo’s partnership, which ends in sadness when Leo dies of typhoid.

Mourning the loss of her late husband, Catt became a lecturer speaking on the subject of women’s rights. Before she knew it, she was caught up in the women’s suffrage movement and was speaking in Wyoming Territory – the first part of America that allowed women to vote.

She married engineer George Catt, and became involved with Susan B. Anthony in the national struggle to pass women’s suffrage as a constitutional amendment.

Cox, with strong emotion in her voice and stature, brings the magnitude of the fight for suffrage to new heights with her story of the congressional battle for legislation. Attendees felt the tension of a legislature divided, and the nerve-wracking experience of hearing the votes counted.

After a slim victory in the nation’s capitol, the new amendment had to be ratified by two-thirds of the states. The fate of women’s suffrage fell on the state of Tennessee and a divided vote in their state legislature.

After a maddening struggle of emotion, Cox brings the story to a climax, as the vote in Tennessee splits down the middle exactly. The vote comes down to one young legislator who experiences a change of heart due to a letter from his mother. With his decision, the amendment won ratification with one vote.

The emotion-filled play carried a deep and strong message, says ISU alumna Kathy Svec.

“It was so powerful,” Svec says. “She has the ability to make you feel the exact emotion of these people, who worked so hard for Women’s Suffrage. You just get choked up.”