America’s 250th: One man’s vote gives women right to vote

There was nothing of a gift about it, nor any polite concession. The government had to be made to cede the right to vote; for over a hundred years it was of the mind that women had no place at the ballot box. One could be tempted to think of the Nineteenth Amendment as having been won by some stately parade of women in white. Still, the reality is of an entirely different order. It was a seventy-two-year marathon of petitions and protests, waged with banners, hunger strikes and an unbreakable will not to be put down. That marathon ended when Tennessee became the final state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, giving women the right to vote, on August 18, 1920, thanks to the vote of one man.

It all started in the summer of 1848 in a Seneca Falls chapel. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, both anti-slavery and women, drew nearly three hundred to hear them put forward something radical. Their “Declaration of Sentiments” was a document that added something simple and obviously long overdue to the nation’s founding principles: “all men and women are created equal.” They laid out their case against a society run by men, one that would not let a married woman sign a contract or own property, much less exercise her sacred right to vote.

From there, the road to the U.S. Constitution was a hard one. For decades, politicians saw the suffragists as a danger to the family unit. Opponents were quick to say that a woman’s mind was not suited to politics and that voting would harm her. Still, the movement grew, particularly on the western frontier where Wyoming and Utah were among the first to open the polls to women.

By the 1910s you could see a rift. Carrie Chapman Catt favored a conservative approach to doing things. At the same time, Alice Paul, a true firebrand, took a more militant tack with her National Woman’s Party. Her “Silent Sentinels” picketed the White House with signs making fun of Wilson for championing democracy overseas while withholding it from women here. The authorities did not take kindly to it. Women were put in the Occoquan Workhouse for getting in the way of traffic. In November 1917, during what came to be known as the Night of Terror, guards lost their temper and beat and choked the prisoners. Force-feeding was used to break the spirit of those who went on strike.

And then there was the moral compromise. To curry favor with the South, white leaders in the movement would sideline Black women. At the 1913 parade, organizers had the decency to tell the Black contingent to stay in the rear. Ida B. Wells had none of it and put herself at the front with the rest of her state’s delegation. For a Black woman the vote was a necessary defense against the terror of the law.

Eventually, the public outcry over the treatment of the suffragists reached Wilson, and he put his name to the amendment. It was a near thing in Congress in 1919 before being sent to the states. The last stand was in Tennessee in the summer of 1920. Nashville was hot and the atmosphere in the “War of the Roses” was thick; supporters in yellow, opponents in red. The Hermitage Hotel was full of backroom dealing and liquor to buy off lawmakers.

In the end it came down to Harry Burn, a representative of twenty-four with a red rose on his lapel. But he had a letter from his mother in his pocket telling him to be a good boy and support the cause. When called upon, he did just that, voting “Aye” to the shock of the room and altering history.

The Nineteenth Amendment was passed, enfranchising some twenty-six million women. But it was no complete victory. Poll taxes and intimidation kept millions of women of color from the polls for another forty-five years until the Civil Rights Movement made its sacrifice. Political equality has never been a single moment of triumph. It is an unyielding march, driven by the radical notion that every voice is to be heard.