Nashville, Tennessee — Date Line: August 18, 1920 — “U.S. Women Get Vote today — Suffragists Win Battle of 70 Years.”

Tennessee had just approved the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, giving voting rights to all women in the nation.

That August 18th vote in the Tennessee House of Representatives had followed by five days of vote in the Tennessee Senate.

The Senate favored ratification by a vote for 25-4. The house vote had been close with 49-47.

Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment.

The required 75 percent ratification by the states had been reached; women’s right to vote became the basic law of the land when the vote was certified and officially proclaimed in Washington, D.C. eight days later.

Tennessee’s senate vote on August 13th was of special interest.

Two days earlier the opposition faction had introduced a resolution to table the vote on the amendment.

Opposition senators were contending that there was a growing objection in the state.

The news report out of Nashville that day stated that Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, leader of the national suffrage association “contends that the poll, showing a majority pledged, had not been altered.”

The resolution to table lost. “The Suffragists Win Early Struggle” had been the headline out of Nashville that evening.

Catt and her forces had fought to bring about the crucial win in Tennessee.

In the senate debate on August 13th, Sen. Chandler, opposition leader, had “bitterly attacked Carrie Chapman Catt.”

“Mrs. Catt favored marriages between negroes and whites… they are trying to put our women on a level with the negroes,” he said.

The gallery hissed, according to the Nashville report.

That Tennessee senator sounds like a racist to me. Catt certainly does not.

Campaigning to give all women the constitutional right to vote cannot be classed with a racist objective, either.

Voting rights do not cure a racist society, and the South in 1920 was immersed in racism.

Compromised arguments used in getting southern legislators to vote for the 19th Amendment must be viewed in light of social reality in the South of more than 75 years ago.

The amendment itself was not a compromise.

Critical battles remained, but the constitutional right to vote existed before that day.

A monumental victory for all women had been won. Three cheers for the Iowa farm girl, our Iowa State graduate of 1880, who had been a major factor in that victory.

Farwell T. Brown

Ames, Iowa