Kate Austin

Kate Cooper Austin (1864–1902) was an American journalist and advocate of feminist and anarchist causes.

Born Catherine Cooper, Kate Cooper Austin was born on July 25, 1864 in La Salle country, Illinois Austin's family moved to Hook's Point, Iowa when she was six.

It was in Hook's Point, Iowa that she married a young farmer, Sam Austin, in August 1883. Around the same time, her father discovered Lucifer, an anarchist/free love journal published by Moses Harman. Austin and her entire family were influenced by Hamon's writings, but it was the Haymarket Riot of 1886 and the ensuing reaction which brought Austin to anarchism.

"Her devotion to liberty made her an anarchist; her hostility to patriarchy made her a feminist. She was too much the former to join the organized women’s movements of her day, and too much the latter to ally with mainline political anarchists—most of them men—whose devotion to liberty often stopped short of women’s liberation."

— Miller, Howard S. Kate Austin: A Feminist-Anarchist on the Farmer's Last Frontier

A member of the American Press Writers' Association, Austin wrote for many working-class and radical newspapers. She also contributed to Lucifer and to anarchist periodicals such as The Firebrand, Free Society, Discontent, and The Demonstrator. Austin's interests included sexual reform and the economic status of working people. In 1897 and 1899, Emma Goldman visited Austin at her home in Caplinger Mills, Missouri, where she gave several well-attended lectures.

Austin died on October 28, 1902 of consumption leaving behind 9 children aged between 19 and 10.

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