Kate M. Gordon

Kate M. Gordon (1861 – 1932) was an American suffragist, civic leader, and one of the leading advocates of women's voting rights in the Southern United States. Gordon was the organizer of the Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference and directed the 1918 campaign for woman suffrage in the state of Louisiana, the first such statewide effort in the American South.

Early years Kate M. Gordon was born July 14, 1861, in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daughter of George Hume Gordon, a Scottish-born schoolmaster, and Margaret (Galiece) Gordon. She had two sisters, Jean and Fanny, as well as two brothers, George M. and W. A. Gordon. Kate's mother was herself an early advocate of women's right to vote, having attended a women's rights meeting in New York as early as 1853. Her father was similarly committed to the principle of equal rights between women and men. Gordon would succeed Ordway, headed the Association from 1904 until 1913.

Gordon's first public organizing effort came in 1899, when she turned out women entitled vote by virtue of being property taxpayers in a special bond election to finance improvements in New Orleans' sewage and drainage system—a particularly critical concern in the city, much of which lay below sea level.

After leaving NAWSA in 1909, Gordon returned to her native New Orleans, where she became engaged in establishing the first hospital in the state of Louisiana for the treatment of victims of tuberculosis. Gordon worked tirelessly raising funds for Camp Hygiea, located near Covington, Louisiana, and for the Louisiana Anti-Tuberculosis Hospital in New Orleans. In 1913, Gordon had returned full-time to activity on the issue of women's suffrage. By this time Gordon had shifted her thinking from top-down national voting rights change—proposed constitutional amendments having been introduced unsuccessfully in every Congressional session since that of 1868—to a state and regional perspective. In November 1913 she was a key organizer of the Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference, of which she would serve as president until its termination in 1917. generated controversy. During her life Gordon also drew criticism from many of her peers for expressing barely concealed racist views.

Gordon assisted in establishing the New Orleans Anti-Tuberculosis Hospital in 1926, serving as the latter's vice president. She also was superintendent of the Milen Home for Feeble-minded Girls from February 1931 until the time of her death. She was 71 years old at the time of her death.