by Elaine Weiss
Chapter 21
The Hour Has Come
HOUSEWIVES LEFT the breakfast dishes in the sink. Clerks took the morning off, and shop attendants might even have called in sick. Farm wives gave the cows an early milking and hopped into the truck for the bumpy ride to the city. Whole families arrived on the streetcars, carrying picnic baskets.
On Wednesday morning, the citizens of Nashville and residents of Davidson County came to Capitol Hill again in hopes of glimpsing a historic moment. They arrived early, while the limestone statehouse still glowed pink in the sidelong rays of the morning sun, when the air was still blessedly cool. They surged up the hill, climbed the steps, attempted to enter the galleries or even just the corridors, but those were already jammed, so they perched themselves on the outdoor porticoes and the parapets, spilled down the steps, and spread out on the sloping lawns. From Carrie Catt’s window, the scene looked like a giant carnival.
The mood was decidedly less jolly within the Hermitage, at least on the floors where the Suffs resided. Whether or not Mrs. Catt and her comrades prayed for divine intervention during the night, they surely did not sleep and arose facing a day when they would be more dependent upon the whims of men than the grace of God. They did not have the votes to win ratification, and they knew it.
The Suffs donned their white dresses and their yellow sashes, their marching clothes. Sue White, Catherine Flanagan, and Betty Gram attached their prison pins. Anita Pollitzer stuck a fresh yellow flower onto the brim of her hat. They went to find their men, get their pledged delegates to the Capitol. Scores of other suffrage workers were doing the same, going about the task with grim resolve and a quiver of foreboding.
It had been a hellish night for many of the legislators. They’d been trapped in late night conferences, woken in the night, and badgered in the morning. They were sick of being hounded by women and pounded by their party leaders. They were exhausted and irritable, and quite a few were frightened.
Governor Roberts was in his office on the first floor of the Capitol hours before the gavel was to rap. He looked frazzled, his eyes sunken, his forelock already stuck to his forehead by perspiration. He was conferring with his lieutenants and with ratification leaders, going down lists of names. He summoned certain delegates to his office for a “talking-to.” He’d already fielded a couple of nervous phone calls from James Cox, pressing for reassurance, which made Roberts only more agitated. And now Cox was calling again.
“Governor, the mothers of America want the League of Nations,” Cox told Roberts, and Roberts nodded as he held the telephone earpiece a few inches from his head. The meaning was clear: women voters would demand America enter the league and so would vote Democratic, vote for Cox and for Roberts. The party needed women voters. Get it done, Cox was telling Roberts.
One of Roberts’s men in the legislature, a dependable ally, was sitting on the other side of the governor’s desk, waiting to receive his talking-to. Banks Turner, a thirty-year-old farmer from West Tennessee, was giving Roberts trouble, siding with the Antis on every vote. There seemed to be no persuading him, he was stubborn as a mule, and he wasn’t thinking long-term, Roberts fretted. Turner waited, not very patiently, while Roberts spoke into the telephone mouthpiece.
“Governor,” Roberts told Cox, “I have right here in my office the man who could furnish the necessary vote for ratification.”
The press box at the front of the house chamber was jammed, the reporters ready. This was turning into a plum assignment; their editors were giving them lots of column inches, putting their stories on the front page. For decades, the suffrage fight—if reported at all—had been relegated to the “women’s page” of most newspapers, alongside household tips, recipes, and club activities. It might peek into the news section if a referendum campaign was being waged in the home state. Now the culmination of the battle in Tennessee for the thirty-sixth state was being treated as breaking news of significant consequence to the nation—which indeed it was.
The Tennessee newspapers were, naturally, consumed by the ratification events, and the regional southern papers paid close, if nervous, attention to the fate of the federal amendment. The major national newspapers, along with the Associated Press, dispatched some of their star political reporters and columnists to Nashville to cover the finale of the ratification drama; The New York Times sent a female journalist to provide lively commentary, supplementing the paper’s straight news accounts. Editorial cartoonists were mining the ratification story for its more comical gems: drawing flirtatious women wooing Tennessee colonels, Republican elephants and Democratic donkeys courting fickle females, a frustrated suffragist trying to fasten the thirty-sixth button on her blouse, and a Tennessee legislator using a Ouija board to predict the outcome of the fight. But there was no doubt: this was a big story.
Joe Hanover made the rounds, shaking hands, patting backs, whispering in ears. Charlie Brooks wasn’t going to make it, Hanover told his ratification troops; his wife wasn’t out of the woods yet, so he couldn’t return on that special train. The Suffs were down another vote.
Anita Pollitzer and Betty Gram watched the delegates walk hesitantly down the corridor and into the chamber. It seemed there were more red roses on male lapels than yesterday, but perhaps that was an optical illusion. They spied Harry Burn walking in, again sporting a red rose. “We really trusted you, Mr. Burn,” they hissed at him, “when you said that you would never hurt us.”
He turned toward them. “I mean that,” he mumbled. As Burn made his way to the left side of the chamber, to his place in the middle of the third row, a page brought an envelope to his desk.
* * *
It was a small irony that the Antis were forced to get their most urgent messages out to the public by buying large display ads in the suffragist morning Tennessean, lining the pockets of their nemesis Luke Lea. That morning they’d taken most of a page to repeat their appeal for Nashvillians to rally to the Capitol in red roses, and they bought another page to rattle any legislators still reluctant to tilt their way. “The Truth About the Negro Problem” grabbed eyeballs with bold type, capital letters, and apocalyptic warnings of RACE WAR:
For the sake of Southern civilization, for the sake of womanhood and for the sake of the welfare of the negro race as well as the white race, the Susan B. Anthony Amendment should be defeated. Nowhere on earth have two races lived in the same territory with such harmony as has always existed between Southern whites and negroes. Except when hurled into political combat with each other by politicians . . . the two races have always gotten along well in the Southern states. This amendment will not only hurl women into political competition and battle with men, but it will and must involve political warfare between the races—a thing that no thinking American, white or black, should advocate.
Making the threat more personal, the advertisement warned that white elected officials in the southern states would be placed in peril by the amendment, likely to be thrown out of office by the combination of women and black voters.
The better class of NEGROES THEMSELVES know they are better represented by able white men than they would be by designing politicians of their own race, just as the majority of the women themselves feel they are better represented by the fathers of their children than they would be by politically ambitious office seekers of their own sex.
“The Federal Amendment brings with it race antagonism as well as sex antagonism and the hazard is too great,” the piece proclaimed. Besides its prominent space in the morning newspaper, every house delegate had a copy of the polemic on his desk. Josephine Pearson could see the flyers from her seat up in the balcony of the chamber.
Speaker Walker gaveled the house to order at ten thirty-five a.m., with ninety-six of the ninety-nine members at their desks, lobbyists for both sides surrounding them. The senate had adjourned its session across the hall to observe the house proceedings, bringing senators to mingle on the floor. Rule #1
7 was again enforced, and the sergeant at arms moved through, clearing the floor of everyone but legislators and reporters. This time women Suffs resisted more strenuously, and the sergeant had to call for his deputies to help evacuate the ornery women. Some walked back onto the floor and had to be removed again. Finally, the debate on the motion to concur with the senate in ratifying the amendment, interrupted by yesterday’s abrupt adjournment, was resumed.
The Suffs applauded L. D. Miller’s call to his colleagues to free themselves from the grip of special interest lobbies that had controlled the legislature for fifty years. But they felt their stomachs clench when yet another faithless Davidson County delegate who’d been counted on the Suff side announced that he was defecting to the Antis. “I have considered it in the secrecy of my closet at home, and I am frank to say to you that I come here this morning with doubt in my heart as to whether it is best for the women of the country.” To the Suffs, his change of mind sounded very suspicious. The Antis gave him a long ovation.
Speeches droned on for most of an hour, and the chamber seemed to slip into a stupor. The day was growing warmer, and the heat seeped into the assembly hall. Delegates gazed into space. Women in the galleries fanned themselves with quick flicks of the wrist. Joe Hanover jumped from one man to another, whispering into their ears. Harry Burn, over in desk forty-four, read the letter that had been delivered by the page, refolded it, pushed it back into its envelope, and tucked it into his inner breast pocket.
Up in the Speaker’s chair, Seth Walker sensed this restlessness and the glum spirits among the suffragists. He’d done the calculations; he knew he had the votes he needed. He signaled for his Anti colleague Austin Overton to take over the Speaker’s chair while he stepped down onto the floor. Walker asked to be recognized. Suffs snapped their eyes toward him and held their breath.
“The hour has come,” Walker shouted with a melodramatic flair. “The battle has been fought and it is won. The measure is defeated.” Some Suffs in the gallery began to sob. “Mr. Speaker, I move that this measure goes where it rightfully belongs—to the table!”
The chamber exploded, with wailing in the galleries and tumult on the floor. Joe Hanover and other Suff delegates jumped into the aisles, clamoring to be recognized, while a chorus of Anti delegates yelled, “Second the motion!” from their desks. A suffragist in the gallery blew a siren horn in protest, adding to the turmoil.
It was a masterstroke, long feared. Tabling would effectively kill the ratification resolution, bump it off the docket, knock it out of consideration, but in a safe, passive way—an attractive escape path for any man still nervous about the consequences of his suffrage decision.
Bang, bang, bang went the gavel, barely audible over the din, and it was several more chaotic, cacophonous minutes before delegate Overton, overwhelmed in his role as Speaker pro tempore, could regain enough control to order a roll call on Walker’s motion to table. Then the chamber quickly grew still.
Sue White stood at the rail at the rear of the floor, a tally sheet in one hand, a pencil in the other. She concentrated completely on the replies of the delegates, going methodically down the alphabetical list in sync with the clerk, making her marks next to each name. She tried not to think about what the final count might be and what it could mean. By all reckonings, with several new additions to their ranks, the Antis had the votes to defeat the amendment. They had forty-nine firm votes, the Suffs only forty-seven. She was an optimist, but she wasn’t naive. This was most likely the death of ratification in Nashville and quite possibly a mortal blow to the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. Tennessee was her home state, and this vote, to her mind, was a test of Tennessee’s commitment to justice and liberty. This was her campaign, she was in charge for the Woman’s Party, and she had failed. She kept her eyes steady on the tally sheet.
The vote seesawed as the roll call progressed. The first set of names (“Anderson”—no; “Bell”—no), rejecting the tabling, gladdened the Suffs. But the next set (Bond, Boyd, Boyer, Bratton, Burn), all voting “aye,” sent them spiraling into despair. Anita Pollitzer crossed off Harry Burn’s name on her stubbornly hopeful “doubtful” list and moved him decisively to the Anti column. The Antis began to clap and cheer for every vote cast their way, and the Suffs tried to keep pace. Back and forth it went.
There were many scribes keeping tallies besides the official clerk of the house: Suffs, Antis, politicians, corporate lobbyists, and news reporters were all working their pencils on the narrow tally sheets. The room resembled a small baseball stadium filled with fanatic fans, all keeping their own box score. It wasn’t easy to keep up, as the clerk’s call of names and the responses were often drowned out by some sort of sonic interference.
“Story,” “Swift,” “Thronesbury”—aye, and the Antis were up on their feet as the roll entered the homestretch and they appeared ahead. The roll sped up: “Travis,” “Tucker,” “Turner”—no, and the score evened up again. Few of the tally takers, or even those just following, had time to pause or think about any anomalies, any strange surprises, among the responses. But Seth Walker and Joe Hanover did notice: Banks Turner had just voted not to table. The roll rushed on.
The Antis seemed to own the end of the alphabet: “Weldon,” “Whitfield,” “Wilson,” “Wolfenbarger,” “Womack”—all voted aye. Women wearing yellow were weeping openly as Speaker Walker shouted the final “aye” and the Antis burst into a wild ovation. Their tallies showed the vote as 49 to 47 for tabling. The amendment was dead in Tennessee! But the clerk had a different accounting: his tally was tied, 48 to 48. By the clerk’s tabulation, the motion to table had not achieved a majority, so it was defeated. And now the entire chamber went berserk.
Delegates sprang out of their chairs and rushed to the base of the Speaker’s stand, forming a seething scrum, shouting, arguing, waving tally sheets in the air. The galleries burst into confused but loud protest: there was something for everyone to complain about. Seth Walker was running up and down the center aisle, and he was fuming: this cannot be, the clerk is mistaken, he insisted. Delegates vied for attention from Overton, the besieged substitute Speaker, the Antis demanding another vote, the Suffs maintaining it wasn’t necessary.
Overton found his gavel useless, so he called on the sergeant at arms to force all members to take their seats. Thomas Riddick would not sit down. He was still vigorously arguing that the clerk’s tally was official, the tie vote should stand, and tabling had been defeated. The sergeant pressed him. “I have as much right to be in the aisles as Walker does!” Riddick yelled as Walker passed by him in the aisle. Then Riddick said something else in a low voice that only Walker and those nearby could hear. Seth Walker wheeled around and advanced toward Riddick in what onlookers described as a “menacing” manner. Riddick stepped forward to confront Walker and the men almost came to blows before delegates jumped between them and pulled them apart. Riddick’s friends calmed him and persuaded him to sit down. Overton, taking his cue from Walker, instructed the clerk to call a second vote.
The roll began again. “Anderson,” “Bell”—no. “Bond,” “Boyd,” “Boyer,” “Bratton,” “Burn”—aye. And so on down the list, with no change in stance. The clerk repeated each delegate’s name and his vote, just to make certain. The roll was orderly, but the chamber was in turmoil, as the tally remained neck and neck. As the roll continued, Seth Walker walked up the central aisle to the desk in the fifth row occupied by Banks Turner. He pulled up a chair, sat down beside Turner, and draped his arm around Turner’s shoulders. Turner was Walker’s contemporary, both a colleague and a friend, and someone Walker had come to trust: Turner had voted right in all the test ballots and had given a good thumbs-down to the ratification resolution in the Constitutional Amendments Committee. Walker couldn’t fathom what was going on with Turner now. Walker kept his arm wrapped around Turner’s shoulders as he whispered urgently into the renegade delegate’s ear. Denizens of the gallery strained thei
r necks to watch Walker applying muscle to Turner, both literally and figuratively. Suffs watched the embrace with alarm: the powerful Speaker was cajoling, perhaps threatening, the one delegate who might save the ratification resolution from immediate doom. Governor Roberts watched intently from the back of the floor.
The roll call headed toward the tail end of the alphabet, the Ss and the Ts. “Tarrant”—no. “Thronesbury”—aye. “Travis”—aye. “Tucker”—no. “Turner . . .” There was a pause, a collective breath holding. Suddenly Banks Turner shook off Seth Walker’s arm from his shoulders, bolted up from his chair, and declared: “Nay.”
“The second ballot is tied, 48 to 48,” the clerk reported amid the Suffs’ shrieks of joy. From high in the Speaker’s chair, Overton announced: “The motion is lost for want of a majority.” Walker stormed away from Turner’s desk, but he quickly realized the new opportunity presented to him by the tie vote: the tabling motion was lost, but the larger battle might still be won. A vote to concur with Senate Joint Resolution #1, ratifying the Nineteenth Amendment, was instantly called.
The sun was high in the sky as noontime approached, baking the heads of the people spread out on the steps, ledges, and lawns of the Capitol. There was a festive mood among those lounging on the grounds as they waited for the periodic reports of what was happening inside. Waiting to hear of the big moment, whenever that might come, whatever it might be. Carrie Catt watched the crowds from her window as she, too, waited. Thirty-five and a half states. In 1908, when she and the Suffs asked President Theodore Roosevelt what it would take to win presidential and congressional support for a federal woman’s suffrage amendment, he told them: “Go, get another state”—get another state to approve woman suffrage and impress the Congress. Now they were down to the last half of a state. It was still excruciating, this waiting.