NARRATOR: After years of militant protest,
the image was at least improbable:
Alice Paul, needle and thread in hand,
patiently stitching satin stars to a flag––
a gambit for publicity she dubbed
"the Betsy Ross of Suffrage."
When a similar photograph,
featuring another Woman's Party member in the role of Ross,
appeared on the cover of the Suffragist, in mid-July 1919,
the flag bore eleven stars,
one for each of the states
that had already ratified the 19th Amendment.
Subsequent editions would track its progress
through the statehouses of America.
WEISS: Three-quarters of the states have to ratify any federal amendment.
There are 48 states in 1920.
That means 36 states have to ratify.
There were not 36 states at that point
that already allowed women to vote.
Nowhere near that close.
And, so, each state to add to that was a real battle.
NARRATOR: In capitols both north and south––
from Boston, Massachusetts to Austin, Texas––
the decades-long struggle was reenacted once more.
Governors, asked to call special sessions, dug in their heels.
Legislators debated and wavered.
And organized anti-suffrage women,
who for years had been distracted by the war in Europe,
surfaced once again to plead
that their sex be left out of the electorate.
It took the suffragists a full year,
but as of mid-June 1920,
thirty-five states had ratified the amendment.
Eight more––seven of them in the Solid South––had rejected it.
Three others refused even to consider it.
That left as a possible 36th only North Carolina,
where defeat was all but certain,
and Tennessee––
which just the previous year
had extended presidential voting rights to women,
in a bitterly contested battle
that split the dominant Democratic party.
Tennessee's governor, Albert Roberts, at first refused to call a special session.
Then, in late June, came a wire from President Wilson,
who pressed the governor to deliver the final state,
so that the Democrats could take credit for it.
Roberts––who liked to say that Wilson was his Moses––
compliantly set the date for Monday, August 9th.
WEISS: The suffragists do not want to stage this in Tennessee.
Tennessee is a border state.
Part of it had actually supported the Union during the Confederacy.
But it's still a Southern state
and it's still a terrible place to have to put
all your marbles for the last possible ratification.
There is a Presidential election looming in the fall,
the first election since the end of World War I.
At a time when the whole world is realigning
and America's going to have to make big decisions
about its role in the world.
The suffragists want to be part of this,
and they've come to the very threshold.
So, Tennessee becomes the last hope.
For both the suffragists and the anti-suffragists,
it's the last stand.
NARRATOR: They began to converge on Nashville
during the first, abysmally hot week in August 1920:
suffragists and anti-suffragists,
legislators, lobbyists, reporters––
all of them primed for the final showdown.
Carrie Chapman Catt had been in town for a month already,
preparing the legislative ground
from her third-floor suite at the Hermitage Hotel.
WEISS: Carrie Catt has been leading the fieldwork for the suffragists.
They want legislators to commit in advance,
to sign a paper saying
yes, I’m going to vote for the federal amendment.
They send Tennessee women out to every town and hamlet and say,
"We are your constituents.
You have to sign this."
And, so, by their count they have the votes.
NARRATOR: But now, as new arrivals crowded into town,
Catt had a dark sense of foreboding.
WEISS: The Anti-Suffragists also have their headquarters in the Hermitage Hotel.
And you have the corporate lobbyists and the politicians
who have come in from all over the country,
and they’re also staying in the hotel.
Even though Prohibition is already in effect,
they open what they call the Jack Daniels suite on the eighth floor,
a 24/7 speakeasy where liquor is dispensed morning, noon, and night
to any legislator who will come up and listen
to the arguments why they should vote against suffrage.
And there’s money being passed,
there’s threats being made,
to get them to change their vote.
NARRATOR: Alice Paul, stuck in Washington D.C. raising funds for the ratification campaign,
got word of the shady dealings from Sue White,
a veteran picketer and native Tennessean
whom Paul had put in charge of the Woman's Party efforts on the ground.
"Nobody will say how bulk of Republicans will vote," White wrote Paul.
"Some reports antis using money...
Wish greatly you were here."
At noon on Monday, August 9th,
the pounding of gavels brought both the Tennessee Senate and House to order––
and set in motion one of the most contentious and chaotic legislative sessions
in the history of the Republic.
Employing a series of procedural high-jinx––
purposeful clerical errors,
resolutions to delay,
maddening adjournments––
opponents of the amendment first managed
to stall the Senate vote until Friday,
leaving legislators with little to do all week
but mingle at the Hermitage.
WEISS: Carrie Catt convenes her suffragists and says,
"Okay, how many of these legislators are susceptible to bribes?
Yes, we have his pledge, but is it reliable?"
And what they find is those pledges begin to get reneged.
NARRATOR: By the time the Senate passed the amendment––twenty-five to four––
the vote in the House had been postponed.
Worse still, Speaker Seth Walker,
who had originally pledged "aye,"
had double-crossed the suffragists,
and vowed to bring with him
as many House members as he could muster.
Tallies made Friday night indicated ratification would fail by two votes.
It was a trying weekend––
with drunken legislators wandering the halls of the Hermitage
and weary suffragists keeping watch over their pledged delegates,
lest any one of them slip away.
WEISS: The suffragists see the erosion of their support,
and they know that it’s other influences that are coming to bear.
They realize they don’t have the votes;
they’re probably going to lose.
And Carrie Catt realizes that she’s been working for this cause for 30 years
and this may be it,
this may be the end.
NARRATOR: On Wednesday, August 18th,
after nine days of delays and three and a half hours of debate,
the suffrage measure finally moved to a vote on the House floor.
In the galleries, anxious women reviewed their tallies––
two votes shy of the required majority.
The chief clerk began to call the roll:
Anderson,
Bell,
Burn.
Harry Burn was twenty-four years old,
the youngest member of the legislature,
and a representative of a strenuously anti-suffrage rural district.
But that morning, a page had handed him a letter from his mother,
which spoke more loudly to Burn than did his constituents.
WEISS: It’s a mother’s letter.
She’s asking him to go shopping for her in the big city
and buy some sheet music.
But she also says she’s been reading the papers
and noticing he’s not been supporting the Suffragists,
and she admonishes him and says
"Be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt."
NARRATOR: To the astonishment of all, Harry Burn voted "aye"––
bringing the tally dead even.
And there it remained through the rest of the roll call.
Suffragists were already weeping softly
when, at the last possible moment,
Banks Turner suddenly stood to address the speaker.
The thirty-year-old farmer had been counted as an opponent;
but he'd kept silent when the roll was called.
Now, he announced he wished to be recorded as having voted "aye."
Catt, who'd elected to wait out the vote at the Hermitage,
could hear the roar in the galleries clear across the street.
WEISS: Carrie Catt’s window faces the state house,
and she hears shouting
and she realizes this is it.
The dream of her life was coming true.
NARRATOR: Outside the statehouse,
Harry Burn paused to exchange congratulations
with Banks Turner and the suffragists,
but only briefly––
having fled the torrent of insults in the House chamber
through a window in the clerk's room.
The closeness of the vote shows you how important the struggle is
and shows you, you weren’t just fighting windmills.
There is always an opponent,
and that opponent has power,
and they are yielding only because they have to.
NARRATOR: The rush wire from Nashville soon reached a waiting Alice Paul,
who hastily stitched to her ratification banner
the long-awaited 36th star.
Eight days later, on August 26th, 1920––
72 years after the movement for woman suffrage first stirred into being––
Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the 19th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution,
and with his seal, enfranchised 26 million women of voting age.
WEISS: The phrase you hear is "In 1920 American women were given the vote."
It drives me crazy.
The struggle for women’s suffrage takes over seven decades.
The women who began the movement didn’t live to see it come to fruition.
And the women who took it over the finish line weren’t born when it began.
And, so, you have these three generations of American women
who all come together in this extraordinary movement for equality.
WARE: To reduce that to women being given the vote or granted the vote,
it just does a disservice to what is clearly
one of the most sustained and successful moments of political mobilization
in all of American history.
It wasn’t just given to them.
Women fought for the right to vote,
and they won the right to vote.