To fully understand the conflict surrounding Catt Hall, it’s necessary to understand the clashing philosophies involved.

Iowa State University President Martin Jischke Chapman Catt acts very much in the American tradition, a white supremacist and authoritarian tradition underlying the entire history of the United States since the early 17th Century, well before its inception. People of color were voiceless and powerless in this country until about 30 years ago and so this white supremacist nation honored whomever it pleased. President Jischke acts from this tradition, even as he calls for diversity.

The September 29th Movement, who intends to get Catt Hall renamed, agrees with the spirit of the men who founded this nation, slaveholders though they were. They rebelled against unjust and authoritarian rule. When those who govern do so in an oppressive way, they said, then those who are governed, after “a long train of abuses,” should revolt and institute a new form of governing agreeable to the governed.

President Jischke uses corporate CEO-style, top-down management, in which all power is vested in him. Using this business style, diversity is what he says it is. In his view, organizations like the Black Student Alliance (BSA) and the Asian Pacific American Awareness Coalition (APAAC) have as much voice as he deigns to gives them. On the other hand, The September 29th Movement, a multicultural organization representing a multiplicity of colors, reaches out to all segments of the ISU community and has membership from virtually all segments. We say ISU is a democracy. We say white supremacy, Nazism and apartheid compose an evil triad we deplore; they have always been evil and never, under any circumstances, acceptable. They were evil yesterday, they are evil today, they will be evil forever. White supremacy is a good place to start talking about Catt Hall.

Catt, a suffragist and leader of the campaign to pass the 19th Amendment, was the first female graduate of ISU. She campaigned tirelessly for woman suffrage and was a major player in the passage of the l9th Amendment that enfranchised women. In 1920, when it was passed, women of color could not vote in the South — where most lived without risking their lives, so middle-class white women were the beneficiaries of Catt’s work. Several years ago, a group of ISU women felt naming a building after her would be the right thing to do.

No women of color were included in this group; they were aware of Catt’s political expediency. One Movement friend, an ISU administrator, notes that good people can do bad things. These women were not racist individuals, but collectively they looked the other way on Catt’s politically racist, xenophobic and classist views. One has admitted publicly that, like Catt, they did what was politically expedient.

This is important: The naming was not racist because Catt is a white woman, or just because the group was all white. It was racist because Catt was politically racist, xenophobic and classist, and women of color were excluded from the decision making.

If they had selected a white woman like Hallie Flanagan, (an Iowan, incidentally) who headed the Federal Theatre project during the Depression, hellraising union organizer Mary Harris “Mother” Jones or Jane Addams, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who worked with the homeless, the act would not have been racist, because they worked for all races and didn’t accommodate white supremacists. On the other hand, if an Aunt Thomasina — the female equivalent of Supreme Court Clarence “Uncle” Thomas — had been in their ranks, and they had selected Catt, the act would still have been racist. We’re talking ideology here, folks, not skin color.

Catt, who told white supremacists to vote for woman suffrage if they wanted to preserve white supremacy, is not politically racist, Jischke maintains, while remaining silent about her xenophobia and classism.

“(W)oman suffrage would so vastly increase the white vote … it would guarantee white supremacy if it otherwise stood in danger of overthrow,” Catt wrote, although she had to know that white supremacists lynched black people almost daily in the South.

It takes a certain kind of Orwellian arrogance for Jischke to read Catt’s statements, clearly meant to reassure racists, and call them “unfortunate” remarks. It takes a deliberate myopia — or a sinister political strategy — to ignore Catt’s many racist, xenophobic and classist statements, and pretend this is only a black people versus white people issue, as both Jischke and the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics pretend it is.

“White supremacy will be strengthened, not weakened, by woman suffrage,” Catt wrote placatingly. Indeed, it was strengthened. Hooded night riders, burning crosses and countless dead bodies of African-Americans thrown in swamps or left swaying grotesquely from trees, homes and churches torched or bombed for nearly five more decades, are graphic testimony that white supremacy was indeed strengthened, not weakened, by woman suffrage.

The September 29th Movement has two major problems with the naming of Carrie Chapman Catt Hall. First, women of color were excluded from the naming process. Second, Catt’s views were politically racist, xenophobic and classist, President Jischke’s reading skills notwithstanding. She let her sisters of color wait until 1964 for enfranchisement.

If this is a new day, a time of diversity at ISU, then administrators can’t behave as they did in the past by honoring people like Catt. Because President Jischke refuses to recommend a name change, and refuses to meet with us with a mediator, The September 29th Movement has initiated PROJECT 200, a campaign to enlist the help of hundreds of students, faculty and staff of all races who oppose white supremacy and political expediency. We can act decisively to change his mind.

In the final part of this series, we’ll discuss PROJECT 200.

Milton McGriff is a graduate student in creative writing and a member of the September 29th Movement’s Central Committee.