The Nudge And Tie Breaker That Took Women’s Suffrage From Nay To Yea

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Alice Paul, a leader of the National Woman’s Party, unfurls the ratification banner with its new 36th star after Tennessee ratified the 19th Amendment on Aug. 18, 1920. The amendment prohibits denying the right to vote based on sex.

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Tennessee state Rep. Harry T. Burn (center, second row from front, smiling) poses with suffrage activist Harriet Taylor Upton and all of Tennessee’s Republican state legislators who voted for the amendment.

Burn Family

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Burn Family

«Tennessee turns out to be their last best hope, the state that had any possibility of ratifying. And that terrifies them, says author Elaine Weiss, whose book The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote recounts the dramatic suffrage battle in Tennessee.

Suffragists knew that other states weren’t going to budge on ratification, explains Weiss. What’s more, they knew opposition in the South was fierce. Opponents used racism and the fear of Black women’s empowerment to stoke resistance.

«The racial arguments that are made are both ugly and abhorrent, Weiss says. «You have broadsides being distributed by the anti-suffrage forces saying, ‘Do you realize that allowing the 19th Amendment to be ratified is going to bring back the horrors of Reconstruction? That there’s going to be,’ as they call it, ‘Negro domination of our government?’ Race is their main arguing point.

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Author Elaine Weiss recounts the dramatic suffrage battle in Tennessee in her book The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote.

Nina Subin/Penguin Books

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Nina Subin/Penguin Books

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Anita Pollitzer, legislative secretary of the National Woman’s Party, meets with Tennessee Sen. John C. Houk (left), Knoxville Mayor E.W. Neal and state Rep. R.I. Johnson — who were suffrage supporters — in front of the Nashville headquarters in August 1920.

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At age 24, Harry T. Burn was the youngest member of the Tennessee legislature in 1920.

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Burn Family

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The envelope that contained the letter Febb Burn wrote to her son, Tennessee state Rep. Harry T. Burn, in which she urged him to vote for the 19th Amendment.

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McClung Historical Collection/Knox County Public Library System

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Harry Burn’s mother, Febb Burn, was a widow and ran the family farm. She was college educated, a voracious newspaper reader and a strong supporter of women’s suffrage.

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Febb Burn’s 1920 voter registration card.

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McClung Historical Collection/Knox County Public Library System

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Suffrage Coalition President Wanda Sobieski (third from right, in suffrage regalia) and other coalition members pose with the statue of Febb and Harry Burn at the unveiling of the Burn Memorial in Knoxville, Tenn., in June 2018.

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Suffrage Coalition President Wanda Sobieski (third from right, in suffrage regalia) and other coalition members pose with the statue of Febb and Harry Burn at the unveiling of the Burn Memorial in Knoxville, Tenn., in June 2018.

Alan Sims

The centennial of women’s suffrage, Sobieski says, is a reminder to value our voting rights.

«If people really — especially women — really understood how hard it was for these women to go through 72 years of struggle, of ridicule, having to basically beg for the vote from the men who controlled the legislatures, she says, «then maybe they’d be more thankful for what they have and more likely to go out and vote.

The Suffrage Coalition had planned a big suffrage centennial parade in Knoxville, but it has pushed that back until next year because of the coronavirus pandemic. The group is calling it «Centennial Plus.

«You know, the suffragists waited 72 years to get the vote, Sobieski says with a chuckle. «I guess we can wait one more year to celebrate the centennial!