One mother's letter changed a legislator's vote, and rewrote the Constitution.
Alone at the Table
At eight o'clock on the morning of August 26, 1920, U.S - secretary of State Bainbridge Colby sat at a table inside his Washington, D.C. residence. The official signed a brief proclamation while he was alone without reporters, photographers or members of the public - this act verified that the United States had ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It is the law which prohibits the government from denying or limiting the right to vote "on account of sex."
The event was a quiet end to a political conflict that lasted for seventy two years after the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. Over multiple decades, activists walked through city streets, stood outside the White House with signs, experienced arrests and received food through tubes during hunger strikes in prison - but the women who worked for this cause were not present in the room when the Secretary signed the document.
The Deciding Ballot
The process reached a critical point eight days before that morning in Nashville, Tennessee. By August 1920, thirty five states had approved the amendment. There was a requirement for thirty six states to reach the three fourths majority for the amendment to become part of the Constitution. As the national government watched the Tennessee General Assembly, opponents of suffrage and leaders of the suffrage campaign competed to influence the final votes.
The outcome of the legislative session depended on Harry Burn, a legislator who was twenty four years old. He wore a red rose on his suit jacket, which represented the group that opposed the right of women to vote. The other legislators expected that Burn would vote against the amendment - but Harry Burn carried in his pocket a letter that his mother, Febb Burn, had written by hand. In this letter she asked him to "be a good boy" and help "put the 'rat' in ratification." When the clerk called his name during the final vote, Burn surprised the officials when he voted in favor of the measure. With this decision to change his position, Tennessee was the thirty sixth state to ratify the amendment on August 18, 1920.
The report from Nashville caused citizens to cheer in many cities but the law required the Tennessee officials to send the certified documents to Washington, D.C. to complete the process. As they anticipated a public ceremony for the signature, organizers like Carrie Chapman Catt, who was the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association & Alice Paul, who was the leader of the National Woman's Party, arranged to meet in the capital.
Avoiding a Public Spectacle
Secretary Colby navigated a difficult situation that involved competing political interests. The organizations that supported voting rights for women divided into separate groups that used different methods. There was intense conflict between the negotiators who worked with Carrie Chapman Catt and the protesters who followed Alice Paul. Because he worried that an invitation to one organization might offend the members of another organization, Colby chose to avoid a public event. He signed the legal document in his private residence before the activists arrived. The women who managed the long political effort found out that the law was final through news reports rather than an official meeting.
An Incomplete Victory
The Nineteenth Amendment increased the number of eligible voters but the law did not assist everyone. The written rules in the Constitution are different from the actual experience of voters. In the southern United States, local officials prevented Black women from voting - requiring money for taxes and using difficult reading exams. There was also the threat of physical harm, and those obstacles remained until the government passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Many Native American women were unable to vote because the government did not consider them to be citizens of the United States before 1924. Even after the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, state laws often stopped the individuals from participating in elections for many years. To conclude many immigrant women from Asia were not allowed to become citizens or vote until the government changed the naturalization laws during the 1940s and 1950s.
On August 26, the United States holds an annual event for Women's Equality Day. It is a way to remember a significant legal event - this event is not finished with a loud celebration - but an official signed the document to end one period of effort and start the next.