There are almost always two sides to any argument. Anyone truly interested in the conflict over the naming of Carrie Chapman Catt Hall should study both sides.

Please, I beg you to obtain a copy of the slickly produced promotion folder of material at the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women in Politics on the third floor of Catt Hall.

You’d better hurry, though, before — ever concerned about appearances —ÿthey remove some of the deliberate misinformation it contains. One can only speculate about the motives that led to this kind of deception.

The letter addressed to “Dear Reader” over center director Dianne Bystrom’s signature has this information next to the second bullet: “Chapter VI from ‘Woman Suffrage by Federal Constitutional Amendment,’ edited by Carrie Catt, published in 1917 (contains white supremacy quote).” The italics on “edited and “quote” are mine.

Make sure your folder still contains the two-page handout with the following three headings: “Quotations from Carrie Chapman Catt: Texts and Contexts,” “The Contexts of Catt’s Controversial Comment on White Supremacy” and “Biographical Profile of Carrie Chapman Catt.”

The copy they provide is of Catt’s infamous chapter six from “Woman Suffrage by Federal Constitutional Amendment,” which we will discuss in detail.

The Catt Center should have typed this disclaimer: “This is the basis (and only cited source) for Catt’s statements on white supremacy. Please read the entire chapter before forming an opinion.”

Now, if the subject of Catt and the accusations by The September 29th Movement that she was politically racist are new to you —ÿand even if it isn’t —ÿyou already should be drawing some conclusions.

For one thing, it seems Catt made one single, solitary comment in her career that can be construed as negative. The Catt Center boldly and fearlessly tells you what it was below the previously mentioned banner containing her controversial comment: “White supremacy will be strengthened, not weakened, by woman suffrage.”

You’re a little confused by the disclaimer in the plural “Catt statements,” but you’re wondering why The September 29th Movement has persisted for two years to get the name changed.

The Movement has persisted because this woman who worked tirelessly for the suffrage of middle- and upper-class white women made only one — to use President Jischke’s word — “regrettable” remark that was ugly in a career-spanning several decades.

If I were new to the subject, that’s what I’d think. And remember, this folder goes out representing “good, solid research” by ISU, your university.

They say it is not “shoddy research” or “scholarship of the lowest kind” as at least three ISU professors —ÿJane Cox, Kirk Smith and Gregg Henry —ÿhave accused The Movement of doing. In addition, Smith —ÿan African American, for whatever that’s worth — believes some of us are “manipulative, dishonest, childish and irresponsible” in our research, attitudes or both. Hold these thoughts, please; we’ll come back to them.

To add to your confusion, Catt is quoted writing to Crisis magazine, the official journal of the NAACP, about “the evils of racism,” and says ” … there will never be a true democracy until every responsible and law-abiding adult in it, without regard to race, sex, color or creed has his or her own inalienable and unpurchasable voice in government.”

By this time, you must be saying, what the hell is wrong with The September 29th Movement?

What is their problem?

Okay, let’s back up. In addition to the “strengthened, not weakened” statement above, Catt goes on to say, “Woman suffrage in the South would so vastly increase the white vote that it would guarantee white supremacy if it otherwise stood in danger of overthrow,” and “[I]f the South really wants White Supremacy (sic), it will urge the enfranchisement of women.”

Not much opposition to white supremacy in the last two statements, is there?

If we’re counting, that’s also three statements on white supremacy, not one.

And the latter two are arguably more damaging than the former.

These “white supremacy” statements were written and published in 1917 under Catt’s byline, both in the book mentioned, and as a separate pamphlet with Catt’s byline.

The September 29th Movement has copies of the table of contents with Catt’s byline and the cover of the pamphlet, both omitted from the Catt Center’s paean to their politically racist heroine.

This is the same year Catt wrote the NAACP trying to sound as if she favored “true democracy.” Her tongue must have been so forked it was split to the root.

Does the phrase the existence ” … of nearly a million illiterate Negroes … ” in the voting populace and attributing the existence of ” … poverty and insanity … ” to their presence count as white supremacist thinking? (Woman’s Journal, Mrs. Catt’s address, Feb. 20, 1904, p. 57, 59.)

How about “woman of American birth will always resent the fact that American men chose to enfranchise Negroes fresh from slavery” over women such as herself?

“[T]he Negro was making little demand for the vote … ” she said. “The woman was making an unprecedented one.” The Republican Party had enfranchised black people with “whip and bayonet,” the implication being that dumb darkies had little interest in being free. (“Woman Suffrage and Politics,” by Nettie Shuler and Catt. New York: National Woman Suffrage Publishing Co., 1917, p. 77.)

The Catt Center’s homage to Catt, by referring to her “statement” implies that no such remarks exist, — most of which are blatant lies about a people who had already been demeaned in horrific bondage for 300 years.

The Catt Center and President Jischke have made absolutely no mention of Catt’s xenophobia and classism.

They won’t admit it; they won’t deny it. I can only guess at their motive: if they only deny her racism, the conflict over the name will look like a fight between black students and white women.

People certainly will believe Jischke and white women before they believe black students, won’t they?

Although The September 29th Movement’s membership has white students and faculty solidly in the membership, it’s in their interest to pretend it doesn’t.

Many scholars to which we can refer you saw Catt for what she was: a racist, xenophobe and classist. She was a white supremacist herself, which is why she had no problem reassuring the South that she would swell their ranks and not oppose their ideology, as more principled suffragists did.

The ISU community must decide who is, in Professor Smith’s words, “manipulative, dishonest, childish and irresponsible.”

The folder the Catt Center releases probably costs more than all the work we’ve been able to reproduce with our meager resources, and I personally feel they should be ashamed of themselves.

I believe they owe ISU an apology, which you probably won’t get.

The September 29th Movement challenges these august scholars to a public debate of their heroine’s duplicitous and white supremacist, xenophobic and classist views at any time, anywhere on this campus, so people can see who is doing what.

They have attempted to mislead you. Get a folder and see for yourself.

Like I said, they should be ashamed of themselves.

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Milton McGriff is a graduate student in creative writing. He is a member of The September 29th Movement.