When the Cult of Celebrity Devours Meaningful History

Featured image: Detail from “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch (bet. 1490 to 1510). Wikimedia Commons.

Katharine Houghton Hepburn helped American women secure the vote and reproductive freedom. Her daughter was a four-time Oscar winner. Chances are, you know about the actress, but not the activist.

By Victoria Martínez

As a Gilded Age heiress, Katharine Martha Houghton could have frittered away her time on fashion and socializing. Instead, she attended both Bryn Mawr College and Radcliffe College, earning her Master’s degree in 1900. As the wife of a doctor, whom she married in 1904, she might have been contented as Mrs. Thomas Hepburn, complacent society hostess. But even as she bore and raised six children, she was an active and prominent activist for women’s rights on par with Carrie Chapman Catt, Margaret Sanger and Alice Paul.

Katharine Martha Houghton Hepburn (1878–1951) in an image captioned “Mrs. Thomas Hepburn of Hartford, Conn.” dated 1920. Part of the U.S. Library of Congress’ Records of the National Woman’s Party collection. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Like her colleagues, Katharine Houghton Hepburn’s[1] résumé of activism is impressive. In the fight for American women’s suffrage, she co-founded the Hartford (Connecticut) Equal Franchise League, served as president of the Connecticut Women’s Suffrage Association, and was legislative chair of the National Women’s Party National Executive Committee. As an advocate of birth control, she co-founded with…