by Elaine Weiss
On Friday, August 13, the Tennessee Senate voted to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment.
Harry T. Burn of Niota, the youngest member of the Tennessee General Assembly, wore a red rose when he entered the House chamber to vote on ratification on Tuesday morning, August 18.
Phoebe (Febb) Burn, Harry’s widowed mother, wrote a letter to her son offering advice on how he should vote on the ratification issue.
Memphis suffragist Charl Williams watched Governor Roberts sign the official ratification certificate on August 24, after a week of Anti manuevers to reverse Tennessee’s decision.
When news of Tennessee’s ratification reached Alice Paul on August 18, she sewed the thirty-sixth star onto her ratification banner and unfurled it from the balcony of Woman’s Party headquarters in Washington.
Alice Paul lifts a glass—filled with a Prohibition-compliant beverage—next to the completed ratification banner outside Woman’s Party headquarters.
The Nineteenth Amendment officially entered the U.S. Constitution on August 26, and Carrie Catt returned home to New York City greeted by a joyous parade. She held a giant thank-you bouquet “from the enfranchised women of America.”
Recruitment drives urged newly enfranchised women to register to vote in the fall 1920 elections. This sign celebrates the woman of the house as a full and patriotic citizen.
Uncle Sam holds his wife’s hands—who wears the cause of suffrage on her sleeve—and announces: “Equal Partners Now, Ma,” as editorial cartoonists celebrate American women’s full citizenship.
A classically robed Liberty hands the ballot to a tired but hopeful American woman, offering her “Congratulations” in this Charles Dana Gibson illustration on the cover of Life magazine in October 1920.
“The Mystery of 1920” is the new woman voter, as a fashionable lady pauses at the door of a voting booth on the cover of Leslie’s Illustrated magazine in September 1920.
On Election Day 2016, thousands of American women visited the graves of suffrage movement leaders, honoring their legacy by pasting “I Voted” stickers on their headstones. Susan Anthony’s grave in Rochester, New York, was festooned with stickers, flags, and flowers.
A statue by Alan LeQuire celebrating Tennessee’s role in securing the Nineteenth Amendment was dedicated in Nashville’s Centennial Park in 2016. It depicts suffragists (from left to right) J. Frankie Pierce, Carrie Chapman Catt, Abby Crawford Milton, Anne Dallas Dudley, and Sue Shelton White.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Just as the woman’s suffrage movement was powered by extraordinary collaborative effort, the creation of this book has been a joyful joint endeavor.
I have many to thank for their help and support, but my first expression of gratitude must go to my virtuoso literary agent, Dorian Karchmar at William Morris Endeavor, who guided me on this adventure. Dorian lent her perceptive eye and creative vision—and her passionate advocacy—to this book, piloting its progress with her signature sweet moxie. I join the lucky chorus of writers who sing Dorian’s praises, offering my own stanzas of esteem and affection.
I also could not have wished for a more delightful co-conspirator than my Viking editor, Wendy Wolf, who brought her keen intellect, lively wit, and whetted pen to this project. Her probing questions and comments made me dive deeper, think harder, write more precisely. Her wise edits—and allergic reaction to dusty metaphors—made this a better book. Both Wendy and Dorian believed in the power of this story, and trusted me to tell it; their confidence gave me courage.
Expanding the circle of publishing professionals who lent their skills to this book are my champions at Viking: I thank president and publisher Brian Tart and editor in chief Andrea Schulz for their spirited support. Georgia Bodnar has been an indefatigable ally. The talented team of Carolyn Coleburn, Lydia Hirt, Alison Klooster, and Brianna Linden have created innovative strategies to bring The Woman’s Hour to its readers; I thank them all. I’ve also had the pleasure of working with three of Dorian Karchmar’s able literary assistants at WME who’ve handled the details—and me—with such care: picture hats off to Simone Blaser, Jamie Carr, and Lizzy Weingold. Thanks also to Clare Ferraro for her great early enthusiasm.
Tennesseans are rightly proud of their state’s decisive role in securing the vote for American women, and I’ve benefited enormously from their interest. Tom Vickstrom, historian of the Hermitage Hotel in Nashville, is a devoted steward of its archives and an enthusiastic scholar of its past. Tom is the Hermitage’s controller, but he took time to provide invaluable materials and illuminating tours. I thank him most of all for arranging for me to stay in the room that was Carrie Catt’s during her long residence at the hotel in 1920; that was a true thrill.
Paula Casey, a daughter of Nashville and citizen of Memphis, is an organizational dynamo dedicated to telling the story of the “Perfect 36th” state. Her sustained efforts to honor the Tennessee women and men who fought for the vote—making their contributions meaningful to a new generation of civic activists—are impressive and important. Paula is joined in this mission by a committed cadre of women who have organized, fund-raised, and managed to erect suffrage monuments around Tennessee. Compliments also to the Tennessee sculptors who created these suffrage statues: Wanda Stanfill’s lovely bust of Sue White in Jackson, and Alan LeQuire’s noble monuments in Nashville, Knoxville, and soon, Memphis, which imbue bronze and stone with the spirit of the Suffs. This book is built upon a foundation of documents—thousands of them—and for helping me to find the ones that reside in Tennessee, I’m indebted to Ron Lee, assistant director of research and public services at the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville, who answered my many obscure questions. TSLA archivists Darla Brock and Genny Carter were also very helpful, as was Deborah May at the Nashville Public Library and Eddie Weeks, legislative librarian at the capitol. Jim Havron, oral history projects coordinator at the Albert Gore Research Center at Middle Tennessee State University, provided me with important transcripts. Gundy County historian Jaqueline Layne Partin generously shared her material on the Pearson family. And G. Wayne Dowdy, who presides over the Memphis and Shelby County Room at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library in Memphis, and is the biographer of Edward “Boss” Crump, provided excellent insights.
Beyond the Volunteer state, Elizabeth Shortt, head archivist at the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library in Staunton, Virginia, gave me access to valuable material, and Sherry Hall, manager of the Harding Home presidential site in Marion, Ohio, provided details. The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, the jewel of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, is one of our great national treasures, and I’ve had the privilege of spending many fruitful hours there. To Ellen Shea, Kathryn Jacob, and the entire research and manuscripts staff, I send deep appreciation. My thanks also to the manuscript archivists at the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress, as well as the staff of the Milton S. Eisenhower Library of Johns Hopkins University.
It is a rare treat, in the course of historical research, to touch your subjects in a more immediate way. I want to thank Dr. Pam Swing, granddaughter of Betty Gram Swing, for providing me with a special connection: Pam guided me through Betty’s papers, which she’d recently donated to the Schlesinger Library, and offered family memories of her grandmother. Likewise, my warm thanks to Edward Kaplan, nephew of Tennessee legislator Joe Hanover, who spent hours with me—on the telephone, through the mail, and in person in Memphis—offering a robust and astute portrait of his colorful uncle. James Jalanek of Memphis, who knew Hanover as a law partner and friend, also provided me with delicious details, as did Margaret Jackson Vaughn and Kevin Walsh. It was also exciting to meet the family of Ann Dallas Dudley: thanks to grandson Guilford Dudley III, granddaughter Trevania Henderson, and great-grandson Chris Dudley for a friendly chat in Nashville.
In my research travels I was housed, fed, and p
ampered by kind friends: Kathy and Rob Jacob in Boston; Betty Marmon in Philadelphia; Jean and Michael Zinn in New York City; Sam and Natalie Babbitt in New Haven; Jocelyn Wurzburg and Bobby Bostick in Memphis. As always, my family in Brooklyn Heights, Babette Krolik and Harry Greenwald, welcomed me with open arms whenever I knocked on their door.
Back home in Baltimore, the solitude of writing was lightened by many forgiving friends who cheerfully tolerated a monomaniacal companion while loyal friends afar gracefully accepted long silences; I treasure the patience and support of them all. Special thanks to my writing colleague and confidante Jill Jonnes for her generosity, good humor, and expert navigational advice. Also to fellow scribbler Steve Luxenberg, for many hours of deep conversation on arcane nineteenth-century topics. Fellow writers of this city, Rob Kanigel and Ann Finkbeiner, also offered me gracious support. More heartfelt thanks to that swashbuckling archivist and author Kathy Jacob for keeping me informed and amused, and to Jean Baker, a great suffrage scholar and kind, enthusiastic adviser. Sam Babbitt, as ever, listened attentively, read astutely, and encouraged lovingly.
This is a book about strong women who shaped our nation, and strong women have also shaped me. In the course of writing this story I lost two of these special women who’ve had the most profound influence upon me: I lost my mother just weeks before beginning this book, and I lost my dear friend, my mentor and muse, Natalie Babbitt, just as I completed it. Natalie would say that the wheel has turned as it should, but I just wish they could have held this book in their hands.
My final, and most profound, thanks go to my family: so willing to forgive maternal distraction and domestic malfeasance; so eager to soothe and cheer. My son, Teddy, and daughter, Abby, are adults now: both are attentive and engaged citizens (and voters!) working, in their own fields, to build more just, green, and art-enriched communities. They continue to bring their mom comfort, giggles, and buoyant optimism. My guiding north star—in writing this book, as in all other endeavors—is my husband, Julian Krolik, who brings his scientific rigor, historical knowledge, and demon grammatical skills to his job as my first reader. For more than three decades he has given me firm anchor and allowed me full sail. It is the great pleasure of my life to explore the mysteries of the expanding universe with him.
NOTES
Catt Papers (Carrie Chapman Catt Papers)
LoC (Library of Congress)
NWPP (National Woman’s Party Papers)
Pearson Papers (Josephine A. Pearson Papers)
TSLA (Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville)
Chapter 1: To Nashville
By the time the train: Catt’s arrival in Nashville at 8:30 p.m. on July 17 is mentioned in the Nashville newspapers: “Mrs. Catt will Arrive Tonight,” Nashville Banner, July 17, 1920. Her travel plan is also discussed in a handwritten annotation to a telegram sent by Marjorie Shuler in Nashville to the National American Suffrage Association headquarters in New York on July 14, in Carrie Chapman Catt Papers, TSLA.
It was Catt’s job: This calculation is recorded in Carrie Chapman Catt and Nettie Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics: The Inner Story of the Suffrage Movement (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1926) and also in the biographical entry on Catt by Van Voris in American National Biography (Oxford University Press).
Catt had kicked up her heels: Catt’s dancing response to Senate approval of the 19th Amendment is described by her friend and secretary, Clara Hyde, who was with her at the time: Clara Hyde to Mary Peck, June 5, 1919, NAWSA Papers, LoC, quoted in Jacqueline Van Voris, Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life (New York: Feminist Press, 1987), 155.
“Our forces are being notified”: Josephine A. Pearson, “My Story: Of How and Why I Became an Antisuffrage Leader,” dated April 30, 1939, Josephine A. Pearson Papers, TSLA, Microfilm reel #1.
She knew she was doing: Pearson describes her mother’s attitude toward woman’s suffrage in “My Story.”
“Daughter, when I’m gone”: This scene is described in Pearson, “My Story.”
Even before Josephine made the vow: Ibid., and Josephine Pearson, “President’s Message: Retiring from Antisuffrage Leadership of Tennessee,” September 30, 1920, in Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, ed., Votes for Women!: The Woman Suffrage Movement in Tennessee, the South, and the Nation (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995), 214–23.
Sue White and Alice Paul: Accounts of White’s participation in the Woman’s Party confrontation with Gov. Cox in Ohio are found in: “Cox to Receive Women Leaders,” Los Angeles Times, July 14, 1920; “Cox to Receive Woman’s Party Envoys Today,” Chicago Tribune, July 16, 1920; “Cox Here Tomorrow,” Washington Post, July 16, 1920; “Militants Plan Raid on Harding,” New York Times, July 18, 1920; “Militants Send 500 Banners and Regalia For Use in Picketing Harding’s Home,” New York Times, July 20, 1920.
Sue White was by now: Biographical details from Betty Sparks Huehls and Beverly Greene Bond, “Sue Shelton White: Lady Warrior,” in Tennessee Women: Their Lives and Times, vol. 1, Sarah Wilkerson Freeman and Beverly Greene Bond, eds. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009), 140–63; James P. Louis, “Sue Shelton White and the Woman Suffrage Movement in Tennessee, 1913–1920,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 22, no. 2 (1963): 170–90; James P. Louis, “Sue Shelton White,” in Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary, 1607–1950, ed. Edward T. James et al. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), III: 590–2; Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States (Oxford, UK, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Wheeler, Votes for Women! Important details are also found in the Sue Shelton White Papers and the Betty Gram Swing Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
more than twenty nations: because of the war, national boundaries had changed dramatically—some countries absorbed, others created, so accounting for the exact number of nations offering suffrage to women in 1920 is a bit difficult to pinpoint. Both Catt and Paul claimed twenty-six suffrage nations at this time.
Catt sailed home from Europe: “Mrs. Catt Back to Help Put Suffrage Over,” New York Tribune, June 26, 1920.
It was a hornets’ nest: Marjorie Shuler’s telegrams from Tennessee are in Catt Papers, TSLA.
“Advise Chief,” Shuler wired: Marjorie Shuler in Nashville to Mrs. Frank Shuler at NAWSA headquarters in New York City, Western Union Telegram, July 10, 1920, Catt Papers, TSLA.
She could still feel the sting: This incident is recounted in Mary Gray Peck, Carrie Chapman Catt: A Biography (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1944), 28, and in Van Voris, Catt, 6.
a large “Suffrage Map”: Versions of the suffrage map were published and displayed by both the NAWSA and Woman’s Party, and appeared regularly in their publications: the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s The Woman’s Journal/The Woman Citizen and the National Woman’s Party’s The Suffragist.
She was a firm believer in evolution: Catt’s lifelong belief in the concepts of evolution, and her reading of Darwin and Spencer, are described in Van Voris, Catt, 9, and Peck, 34.
Union Station was the pride: Details on the station and Maj. Lewis are in Joe Sherman, A Thousand Voices: The Story of Nashville’s Union Station (Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press, 1987).
Pearson was born: Biographical information from Pearson, “My Story”; Anastatia Sims, “Beyond the Ballot: the Radical Vision of the Antisuffragists,” in Wheeler, Votes for Women!, 105–28; Alice Marie Pettigrew, “Josephine Anderson Pearson: Racism, Class and Gender in the Southern Antisuffrage Movement,” honors thesis, Vanderbilt University, 1997.
It had gone rather well: Gov. Cox’s promises to the suffragists are found in “Militants Plan Raid on Harding,” New York Times, July 18, 1920; “Cox Promises Aid to Suffs,” Baltimore Sun, July 17, 1920.
She had given Miss Paul her candid assessment: White’s report to Alice Paul, June 29, 1920, in NWPP, Lo
C, Microfilm reel #79; also in “Suffs Ask for $10,000 for Tennessee Fight,” Baltimore Sun, July 5, 1920.
an “absolute, united, optimistic front”: Catt to Mrs. Guilford Dudley, Mrs. George Fort Milton, and Mrs. John M. Kenny, July 8, 1920, in Catt Papers, TSLA.
“The Anti-Suffs will flood Tennessee”: Catt to Mrs. John Kenny, June 29, 1920, in Catt Papers, TSLA.
“Whatever you do”: Catt to Dudley, Milton, and Kenny. Catt Papers, TSLA.
“At this time”: Carrie Chapman Catt to Mrs. Guilford Dudley, July 12, 1920, in Catt Papers, TSLA.
When Catt stepped off the train: Catt’s reception upon her arrival in Nashville is described in “Nation Looks to Solons of State For Ratification,” Nashville Tennessean, July 18, 1920, and “Mrs. Catt Will Arrive Tonight,” Nashville Banner, July 17, 1920.
“I’ve come to look over the situation”: “Nation Looks to Solons of State For Ratification,” Nashville Tennessean, July 18, 1920.
“All the states consider Tennessee”: Ibid.
Miss Pearson sat naked: Details of Pearson’s night in the bathtub appear in her memoir “My Story.” Also printed in Wheeler, Votes for Women!, 224–42.
Chapter 2: Lay of the Land
The first trip was with Susan Anthony: Details of this trip are found in Mary Gray Peck, Carrie Chapman Catt (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1944), 81–83, and in Jacqueline Van Voris, Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life (New York: Feminist Press, 1987), 42–43.
