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5:17 PM
("Few people live to see the actual and final realization of hopes to which they have devoted their lives. That privilege is ours.")
(~American suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt)
On this day in 1920, the 19th Amendment, recognizing women's right to vote in the United States, was adopted and became part of the Constitution -- although few people realize, as Jennie Cohen writes on History, that "women’s suffrage in the United States ultimately hinged on an 11th-hour change of heart by a young state legislator with a very powerful mother."
"The date was August 18, 1920, and the man was Harry Burn, a 24-year-old representative from East Tennessee who two years earlier had become the youngest member of the state legislature. The red rose [pinned to his lapel] signified his opposition to the proposed 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which stated that '[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.'
By the summer of 1920, 35 states had ratified the measure, bringing it one vote short of the required 36. In Tennessee, it had sailed through the Senate but stalled in the House of Representatives, prompting thousands of pro- and anti-suffrage activists to descend upon Nashville. If Burn and his colleagues voted in its favor, the 19th Amendment would pass the final hurdle on its way to adoption.
( Read more... )"The date was August 18, 1920, and the man was Harry Burn, a 24-year-old representative from East Tennessee who two years earlier had become the youngest member of the state legislature. The red rose [pinned to his lapel] signified his opposition to the proposed 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which stated that '[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.'
By the summer of 1920, 35 states had ratified the measure, bringing it one vote short of the required 36. In Tennessee, it had sailed through the Senate but stalled in the House of Representatives, prompting thousands of pro- and anti-suffrage activists to descend upon Nashville. If Burn and his colleagues voted in its favor, the 19th Amendment would pass the final hurdle on its way to adoption.