The vote ended in a tie: 48 to 48. The House voted to table for now. Initially the twenty-four year old Harry Thomas Burn had voted against it. But during a break, Burn changed his mind after reading a letter from his mother, Febb Burn, “Hurrah! And vote for suffrage and don’t keep them in doubt!”
He switched his vote from ‘nay’ to ‘aye,’ and, at 49 to 47 votes, made Tennessee the thirty sixth state, thus completing the required three-fourths majority of states to ratify an amendment to the constitution. The 19th amendment to the constitution gave women the right to vote. I’m grateful for that right.
Men received (so-called) universal suffrage in 1870 with the passage of the fifteenth amendment, but it took another fifty years for the idea of women voting to become another constitutional amendment. I think the most interesting part of the story of women’s suffrage is that women (and men) needed to convince the men who could vote, to vote to give women the power to vote. Ironic, wasn’t it?
Starting in 1917, the Women’s Party picketed the White House for a year and a half. They were frustrated by then President Wilson’s refusal to publicly support women’s suffrage. The women wanted to change the public’s mind, but also the president’s mind on the issue. I talk about picketing the White House for a few minutes, but it’s hard for me to imagine spending time on the picket lines for a year and a half. More than 168 women were imprisoned for picketing or ‘obstructing traffic’ and many of the women chose jail time over a small fine. Other women refused to eat and maintained hunger strikes. In 1917, President Wilson pardoned the suffragists in jail. But by summer of 1918, arrests continued.
The United States’ entry into the Great War gave women a public platform for suffrage. Going to war to “make the world safe for democracy” was President Wilson’s phrase, and the suffragettes argued the US was not a democracy. How can half the population not have the right to vote in a democratic country?
In January of 1918, President Wilson finally made a pro-suffrage speech. In 1919, Congress finally passed the 19th amendment, then the states needed to hold individual conventions to ratify the amendment. Later Burn remarked, “I appreciate the fact that an opportunity as does seldom come to a mortal man to free seventeen million from political slavery was mine.”
I would love to think that I would picket at the White House for women’s suffrage, had I been alive and able to do so in the 1900s. I would also like to think that I would have advocated for ALL women and men to vote, not just white Americans as many suffragettes did. Truthfully, though, I don’t know. Unlike many other people around the world and even in my own country, I will not pay a high price for going to the polls, filling out my ballot, and submitting it. I will get a sticker and I will be happy about that sticker and wear it. I savor the feeling of filling out my ballot and submitting it, and my daughters will come along and witness that moment too. I’m excited to share that moment with them and explain what it means to be a citizen that votes and that it used to be the case that women and people of color could be citizens without the ability to vote.
It took so many women and men DECADES to shift people’s ideas about suffrage for women. It took more decades for real universal suffrage to happen. It took courage for young men like Burns to change his mind on his vote, and it look courage for his mom to write him a note to remind him to vote for women. It took courage for the many women and men to picket the White House and advocate for President Wilson to make women’s suffrage a national conversation. And it took TIME.
Take the time to talk to your children, family, loved ones, colleagues, neighbors and maybe even your so-called enemies, political or otherwise, about why voting matters to you.
“Feminism: The Fight for Suffrage.” In 1910-1919, edited by Judith S. Baughman, Victor Bondi, Richard Layman, Tandy McConnell, and Vincent Tompkins. Vol. 2 of American Decades. Detroit, MI: Gale, 2001. Gale eBooks (accessed November 3, 2024). https://link-gale-com.ezproxy.nwciowa.edu/apps/doc/CX3468300453/GVRL?u=oran58619&sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=26fc7e71.
As always, thank you.
May we never take it for granted. Thanks.
Thank you once more. I love your writings. This reminds me of the movie, “Iron Jawed Angels” which I found really moving.
May God continue to bless you as you bless us with your writing.
Thanks for telling the story of these women whose voices were not listened to, and they persisted. Let’s keep paying attention to people whose voices are shushed. Just like Jesus kept going to the margins of his society, that is one way that we can also bring people in. Who would want to join a “kingdom” where their voices weren’t heard?