The Woman's Hour

by Elaine Weiss

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  Ten weeks later, on Election Day 2016, in celebration of the possibility that a woman might be elected president of the United States, thousands of women made an emotional pilgrimage: first to their polling place and then to a cemetery. They cast their ballots for Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first woman to run for president as the candidate of a major political party, and then went to visit the graves of some of the suffrage leaders who’d won that ballot for them. In Rochester, New York, almost ten thousand women brought flowers and their “I VOTED” stickers to adorn Susan B. Anthony’s headstone; in New York City’s Woodlawn Cemetery, women voters decorated the graves of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Carrie Catt, and Mollie Hay in similar fashion; and in southern New Jersey, Alice Paul’s final resting place was festooned with bouquets, stickers, and thank-you notes. In Nashville, the new woman suffrage monument in Centennial Park was decorated with bouquets of yellow roses.

  Epilogue

  HARRY BURN SERVED in the Tennessee House of Representatives for another term, then in 1923 he returned to McMinn County to practice law. He made an unsuccessful run for governor in 1930; was elected to the Tennessee Senate in 1949; served on the state planning commission for twenty years. He was also a bank president and lawyer for the Southern Railway. Burn died in 1977.

  Carrie Catt remained an activist for the rest of her life. Turning her energies to antiwar efforts, she founded the National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War to advocate for peace and disarmament and was monitored by the FBI. Alarmed by Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933, she organized the Protest Committee of Non-Jewish Women Against the Persecution of Jews in Germany and lobbied the U.S. government to ease immigration restrictions for refugees. Catt died of a heart attack in 1947.

  James Cox returned to his publishing business in Dayton, expanding it into a media empire. Today, Cox Enterprises is one of the largest media companies in the nation; the Cox family still owns and runs the company.

  Anne Dallas Dudley remained active in both the national Democratic Party and Nashville’s civic life, establishing the Woman’s Civic League to improve municipal government programs. In the 1930s, Dudley led the Maternal Welfare Organization of Tennessee and brought Margaret Sanger to Nashville to raise awareness of the importance of birth control. Dudley died in 1955.

  Betty Gram went to Berlin to continue her musical studies and married radio journalist Raymond Swing, who made headlines for his unusual decision to take his wife’s name. Betty continued her affiliation with the National Woman’s Party, working for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, and she remained a close friend of Sue White’s. She died in 1969.

  Joseph Hanover returned to Memphis and with his brother established a thriving law practice, which subsequently grew into one of Memphis’s largest law firms. He served as chair of the Shelby County Port Commission, among other posts, and was honored for his community service and philanthropy. Hanover died in 1984.

  Warren Harding continued his affair with Nan Britton while in the White House; he died in office in 1923, and his term is remembered chiefly for the Teapot Dome scandal and a generally corrupt administration.

  Luke Lea expanded his political influence and business interests, investing in real estate and banking during the 1920s, including some questionable ventures. In 1934, Lea was convicted of violations of banking laws in North Carolina and sent to prison. He was paroled after two years and then pardoned, but by then he had lost the Nashville Tennessean and his political clout. Lea died in 1945.

  Catherine Talty Kenny served as the second president of the Tennessee League of Women Voters and followed through on her promises to win support for Frankie Pierce’s projects to aid black Tennesseans. Kenny also held high posts in the state and national Democratic Party and chaired the Nashville City Hospital Commission for eight years, where she improved working conditions for nurses and brought black nurses onto the staff. Kenny died in 1950.

  Abby Crawford Milton led the Tennessee LWV through its first years. She lobbied for legislation and reforms benefiting women and in the late 1930s ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Tennessee Senate; she also published several volumes of poetry. Abby died in 1991, aged 110 years.

  Alice Paul led the National Woman’s Party for the rest of her life, working for women’s full legal equality. The Woman’s Party lobbied in Congress and state legislatures for stronger guarantees of women’s rights, most especially for the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was passed by Congress in 1972 but never ratified by the states. Paul died in 1977, and the National Woman’s Party ended its political activity in 1997; it is now an educational organization.

  Josephine Pearson returned to teaching, mostly at Christian colleges, and continued to be a prolific writer of colorful essays and opinion pieces on political and cultural topics. She died in 1944 and is buried next to her parents in Monteagle Cemetery in Tennessee.

  Juno Frankie Pierce continued to advocate for better facilities for Nashville’s African American citizens and worked with Catherine Kenny and the League of Women Voters to win legislative approval and funding for the Tennessee Vocational School for Colored Girls; Pierce served as the school’s superintendent from its opening in 1923 until her retirement in 1939. She also led Nashville’s black club women in a protest march to City Hall, demonstrating against Jim Crow segregation policies decades before such marches became a staple of the modern civil rights era. Pierce died in 1954.

  Anita Pollitzer continued working with Alice Paul as an officer of the National Woman’s Party for more than fifty years. Pollitzer married, earned a master’s degree in international relations, and lobbied strenuously for the ERA. Paul tapped Pollitzer to lead the National Woman’s Party as chairwoman in 1945. Pollitzer wrote a memoir of her friendship with Georgia O’Keeffe (A Woman on Paper), and their long correspondence was compiled in Lovingly, Georgia. Pollitzer died in 1975.

  Albert Roberts resumed his law practice in Nashville after losing his bid for reelection as governor. Though he never held office again, Roberts continued his role as a political elder statesman and adviser. He died in 1946.

  Eleanor Roosevelt joined the League of Women Voters in late 1920 and became one of Carrie Catt’s protégées. Catt brought her onto the LWV board as vice president of legislative affairs, an important step in Eleanor’s widening political education. Catt also appointed Eleanor a director of the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission; the women worked together in peace and justice organizations for years and remained friends. Roosevelt died in 1962.

  Harriet Taylor Upton, as vice chair of the RNC Executive Committee, advocated for the appointment of women to government posts. In 1924, at the age of seventy, she made an unsuccessful run for Congress from her home district in Ohio. She died in 1945.

  Seth Walker left the Tennessee legislature and resumed his successful private law practice, which included serving as the legal representative of several railroad companies. He ended his career as a district attorney for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad in Nashville. Walker died in 1951.

  Sue White put her law degree to good use in helping draft the Equal Rights Amendment and in distinguished government service. She worked closely with Eleanor Roosevelt in Washington to get women involved in the Democratic Party, then joined Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal administration, rising to principal counsel for the newly established Social Security Administration. She died in 1943.

  This poster was used confidently in the successful 1917 New York woman suffrage referendum campaign.

  Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton worked together for fifty years to win the vote for women. “I forged the thunderbolts and she fired them,” said Stanton about their collaboration.

  Frederick Douglass supported Elizabeth Stanton’s controversial call for women’s enfranchisement at the Seneca Falls convention, and remained a steadfast “woman’s rights man” all his life.
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br />   Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, was both an idealist and a savvy politician. She came to Nashville reluctantly to lead the ratification effort.

  Sue Shelton White, a young Tennessee suffragist, grew impatient with the slow, polite approach toward winning the vote. She joined the more militant National Woman’s Party and led its ratification campaign in her native state.

  A young Josephine Anderson Pearson, posing with a book and a rose. Honoring a vow to her mother, she would lead the local Antis in Tennessee in opposition to the federal amendment.

  After an apprenticeship in direct-action tactics in Britain, Alice Paul returned home to launch more aggressive demands for a federal amendment, precipitating a split in the American suffrage movement.

  As a young suffrage field organizer, Catt caught the eye of Susan Anthony, who recognized her management talents. Catt became one of “Aunt Susan’s Girls” and was chosen by Anthony to succeed her as president of the NAWSA.

  Anne Dallas Dudley was a socially prominent Nashvillian who made the cause of woman suffrage respectable in Tennessee. This image of beauty and maternal bliss was circulated to refute the stereotype of suffragists as ugly, unsexed “she-men.”

  Abby Crawford Milton of Chattanooga broadened and strengthened the state suffrage organization and served as the first president of the Tennessee League of Women Voters.

  Catherine Talty Kenny organized Nashville’s first suffrage parade, encouraging women to brave societal scorn to win their rights. A talented strategist, she led the Tennessee League of Women Voters’ ratification committee.

  Albert Houston Roberts tried to avoid calling the Tennessee legislature into special session to consider ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, as the controversial move would complicate his reelection campaign.

  Luke Lea, former U.S. senator and publisher of the Nashville Tennessean, was a strong supporter of woman suffrage. His newspaper advocated for ratification.

  Edward Stahlman, a former railroad industry executive and publisher of the conservative Nashville Banner, signed on to the Men’s Ratification Committee supporting adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment.

  President Woodrow Wilson was an invalid in 1920, and his wife, Edith, assumed many gate-keeping and decision-making powers in the White House. Edith was an ardent antisuffragist.

  Ida B. Wells, journalist and fearless civil rights activist, fought for racial justice and woman suffrage. She founded the Alpha Suffrage Club for black women in Chicago.

  Protesting Congress’s failure to act on the federal suffrage amendment, Alice Paul’s National Woman’s Party tried to punish the party in power by working against President Wilson and all Democrats in the 1916 elections.

  Democratic presidential candidates James Cox of Ohio and Franklin Roosevelt of New York visited the White House in late July 1920 to secure President Wilson’s blessing. The possibility of 27 million women voting in the fall was not discussed.

  In early 1917, with America on the brink of war, Alice Paul’s Woman’s Party began picketing the White House. The picketers were vilified as unpatriotic, and hundreds of women were arrested, imprisoned, and mistreated.

  Miriam Follin Leslie, a wealthy New York magazine publisher, bequeathed her fortune and jewels to Carrie Catt to benefit the cause of woman suffrage. Her money financed NAWSA’s ratification campaign.

  Carrie Catt and her partner Mary Garrett Hay spearheaded the New York state campaign to win suffrage by referendum. Here Catt and Hay cast the first ballots of their lives in the 1918 state elections.

  By 1920 the official suffrage map was a crazy quilt of designs representing the status of women’s voting rights in the states.

  Betty Gram left a promising Broadway career to join the Woman’s Party; she was arrested and imprisoned for picketing the White House. She used her theatrical talents in the Tennessee ratification fight.

  Anita Pollitzer, a twenty-five-year-old artist, was a national organizer for the Woman’s Party. Here she consults with a Tennessee politician.

  Juno Frankie Pierce, a Nashville civic leader, led efforts to gain suffrage for black women and register them to vote. In May 1920, she addressed the first meeting of the Tennesse League of Women Voters in the statehouse.

  Uncle Sam struggles to secure the last button—the final state—needed for ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment as a frustrated woman complains: “It’s that thirty-sixth button, Samuel—”

  Antisuffragists used images like this—depicting a father returning home from work to find his children abandoned by their suffragist mother—as a warning that voting women posed threats to the home and family.

  Warren G. Harding was the 1920 Republican presidential candidate, and his prosuffrage wife, Florence, took a leading role in his campaign and his career. But suffragists, with good reason, did not trust him.

  The National Woman’s Party demonstrates at Harding’s Notification Day ceremonies in Marion, Ohio, in late July 1920, trying to push Harding toward a more active role in Tennessee’s ratification fight.

  “Please!” a woman pleads with a courtly Tennessee gentleman as she begs for a special session of the General Assembly to consider ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.

  Sue White (center), Betty Gram (far right), and the National Woman’s Party picketed the Republican National Convention in Chicago in June 1920, protesting the party’s lack of commitment to ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.

  The grand Hotel Hermitage became the headquarters and home for both Suffs and Antis during the six weeks of the ratification battle; the hotel lobby became known as the “third house” of the legislature.

  From a boat bobbing in the Hudson River, Louisine Havemeyer (right) passes the Suffrage Torch to New Jersey colleagues during the 1915 woman suffrage referendum campaign in New York and New Jersey. Neither state approved the vote for women.

  Alice Paul was a master designer of pageants, demonstrations, and photo ops to promote suffrage. As each state ratified, it earned a star on her ratification victory banner. The thirty-sixth star was elusive.

  Alice Paul awarded these small silver medals of valor to Woman’s Party veterans who endured imprisonment for their civil disobedience. Sue White, Catherine Flanagan, and Betty Gram wore their pins proudly in Nashville.

  Seth Walker, Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives, promised suffragists he would pilot the Nineteenth Amendment ratification resolution to success in his chamber.

  Delegate Joseph Hanover of Memphis was a staunch woman suffrage supporter; his sincerity and political acumen impressed Carrie Catt, and he became the ratificationists’ floor leader in the House.

  Edward “Boss” Crump, former mayor of Memphis, led the Democratic party machine in Shelby County and made sure Memphis area delegates were on board for ratification. He wanted women to vote.

  Sue White used her knowledge of her home state to guide the Woman’s Party campaign in Tennessee. Here she is meeting to plot strategy with (from left to right) U.S. senator Kenneth McKellar, state senator Ernest Haston, Governor Albert Roberts, and Memphis delegate Joe Hanover.

  Josephine Pearson, at right, presides over a busy workshop of volunteers at Anti headquarters in the Hotel Hermitage.

  Nina Pinckard, president of the Southern Women’s Rejection League, poses with Josephine Pearson at Anti headquarters. Between the women sits an elderly Confederate veteran.

  Nina Pinckard of Alabama, Charlotte Rowe of New York, and Anne Pleasant of Louisiana held red roses as they lobbied against ratification in Nashville.

  Josephine Pearson reveled in her role as Anti leader, even though she believed women shouldn’t be involved in politics.

  Speaker Seth Walker presided over the House of Representatives’ bitter debates over ratification.

  The Antis sought to irritate male egos with this
poster depicting a “henpecked” rooster whose hen wears a suffrage sash. “A Vote for Federal Suffrage is a Vote for Organized Female Nagging Forever.”

  The Antis attacked Carrie Catt—personally and politically—at every opportunity, and used this broadside to accuse her of being unpatriotic, even treasonous.

  This Anti broadside insists Tenneessee legislators “do their duty” to protect the state from the Nineteenth Amendment. The federal government should have no say in who has the right to vote.

  Antis advertised this rally “To Save the South” from the threat of federal pressure on southern states to allow black women, and men, to vote.