Women's History Month Featured Leader: Carry Nation

In March, we’re featuring an influential woman every day in honor of Women’s History Month.
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Today we’re celebrating:

Carry Nation

Radical temperance movement leader (1846 – 1911)
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• Became an activist after her first husband died of alcoholism after a year of marriage
• Cofounder of her local Texas branch of the Women’s Temperance Movement
• Believed she was divinely ordained to destroy saloons and used a hatchet to smash bottles and kegs in saloons in what she called “hatchetations”
• Exerted force in response to the lack of agency and support women had in their marriages, where they were stuck in marriages with drunken husbands
• When Nation was imprisoned for her hatchetations, she raised bail money through speaking engagements and selling souvenir hatchets