Dr. Caroline Spencer

Caroline Spencer
Physician, Suffragist
1861 - 1928
INDUCTED 2006

Dr. Caroline Spencer, a graduate of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, was a leader of the early 20th century women’s rights movement.

Although a licensed physician, she focused on correcting women’s political and economic inequalities. By 1913, she was an influential leader of Alice Paul’s Congressional Union/National Woman’s Party, the more radical wing of the suffrage movement. In 1916, she interrupted William Jennings Bryan’s speech in her home town Colorado Springs, as well as one of President Woodrow Wilson's speeches to Congress. Her banners asked what the men would do for women’s suffrage. Between 1917 and 1919, she picketed the White House for the passage of the 19th Amendment. She was arrested three times and twice imprisoned. Spencer’s brave and forceful actions helped publicize the demand for the amendment’s passage in 1920.

“The tyranny of half the race over the other half is the first wrong to be righted, and its overthrow the greatest revolution conceivable.” — Dr. Caroline Spencer