Program

National Votes for Women Trail

Subject

Event, Government, House, People

Location

2519 Broad Ave, Memphis, TN 38112, USA

Lat/Long

35.147926420883, -89.975402800151

Grant Recipient

National Collaborative for Women's History Sites

After decades of women’s suffrage activism, in June 1919, Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Nineteenth Amendment states that the right to vote cannot be denied on account of sex. However, for the amendment to become valid, it needed to be ratified by three-fourths of the states. At the time, 36 states needed to ratify the amendment for it to become part of the Constitution.

By March 1920, 35 states had ratified the Nineteenth Amendment. Joseph Hanover, a lawyer and state legislator from Memphis, Tennessee, served as leader on the floor of the Tennessee State House in a push for the ratification of the amendment by the state. His final speech in support of ratification, given before the Tennessee House of Representatives, was recorded in the August 18, 1920 edition of the Nashville Tennessean. Hanover said in part:

“The entire world today has cast its eyes on Tennessee. … This question is not one that one state or two states are interested in. I am here voting for this amendment because it is a moral question.”

Hanover continued, shedding light on what was taking place in the state during the ratification efforts:

“There has been so much said about the Constitution of Tennessee, but I want to say what is a greater crime. Certain interests have sent lobbyists from New York and San Francisco to work on the Legislature of Tennessee. … I do say that certain interests have powerful lobbyists at work here to defeat this measure.”

Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), was in Tennessee to aid in the ratification efforts. In a speech given upon her return to New York, printed in the September 4, 1920 issue of the Woman Citizen, the official publication of the NAWSA, Catt recounted her experience in Tennessee and the fight for ratification in the state:

“Never in the history of politics has there been such a force for evil, such a nefarious lobby as labored to block the advance of suffrage in Nashville, Tenn. In the short time, five weeks perhaps, I spent in Tennessee’s capital, I have been called more names, been more maligned, more lied about than in the thirty previous years I worked for suffrage. I was flooded with anonymous letters, vulgar, ignorant, insane. Strange men and groups of men sprang up, men we had never met before in battle. Who were they? We were told this is the railroad lobby, this is the steel lobby, these are lobbyists from the Manufacturers’ Association, these come from the aluminum interests, this is the remnant of the old whiskey ring.”

Despite these obstacles, suffragists achieved success, thanks in part to Hanover’s continued efforts to urge approval of the amendment by the Tennessee legislature. On August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. With this, the necessary three-fourths of states had ratified the amendment, and women had finally achieved the right to vote in the United States.