TENNESSEE. PART I.[164]
The history of the suffrage movement in Tennessee filled only five pages of the volume preceding this one, which ended with 1900, and such as there was had been due principally to that dauntless pioneer, Mrs. Lide A. Meriwether of Memphis, to whom this chapter is reverently and gratefully dedicated. The first suffrage society was formed in Memphis in May, 1889, and none of its founders is now living except Mrs. J. D. Allen of this city. In April, 1894, a society was formed at Nashville at the home of Mrs. H. C. Gardner by Miss Amelia Territt, Mrs. Bettie Donelson and a few others but it had no connection with the one at Memphis. Its members were earnest and capable but it did not long survive. Through the efforts of the National Association a State organization was effected in 1897, the year of the Centennial Exposition in Nashville, and there was a convention in April, 1900, attended by Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, national president. There had been no State convention for five years when in 1906, through the initiative of Miss Belle Kearney of Mississippi a meeting was called in Memphis of which Miss Laura Clay of Kentucky sends the following account taken from her scrapbook:
The conference of Southern Women Suffragists was held in Memphis December 19, 20, the opening session in the morning at the Peabody Hotel; the afternoon session at the residence of Mrs. J. O. Crawford and the other sessions at the hotel. Miss Clay was elected chairman; Mrs. Nannie Curtiss of Texas, secretary. The meeting included representatives from many of the southern States and letters were received from "Dorothy Dix," Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick and Mrs. Sophy Wright of New Orleans; Mrs. Mary Bentley Thomas of Baltimore; Mrs. Josephine K. Henry of Versailles, Ky.; Mrs. Eliza Strong Tracey of Houston; Mrs. Mary B. Clay and Mrs. James Bennett of Richmond, Ky., and Mrs. Key, president of the North Texas Girls' College. Discussions on aspects of the suffrage question were led by Miss Kearney, Miss Clay, Mrs. Meriwether and Mrs. Jennie H. Sibley of Georgia. The conference was resolved into a committee of the whole to formulate plans for concerted legislative work in the southern States. A thousand copies of the resolutions were printed. At this time the State Equal Suffrage Association was re-organized, with Mrs. Meriwether honorary president; Mrs. J. D. Allen, president; Mrs. L. F. Selden, corresponding secretary and treasurer; Mrs. M. M. Betts, recording secretary; Mrs. S. S. Deem, chairman of problems affecting women or children.
Mrs. Allen served continuously until 1912. In 1908 the State Federation of Labor not only endorsed woman suffrage but agreed to petition members of the Legislature and Congress to work for it and they loyally kept their pledge. This same year suffrage literature was first distributed at the State Federation of Women's Clubs and Dr. Shaw, then president of the National Association, spoke in Memphis.
In 1910 the first suffrage State petition work was begun in Memphis and its Nineteenth Century Club and the Newman Circle of Knoxville held parlor meetings and discussions. Knoxville formed a local league; the women's clubs began to awaken and the State Federation appointed its first legislative committee, with the object of having the laws unfavorable to women changed. In 1911 thousands of pieces of literature were distributed, press articles sent out and a resolution to amend the State constitution by striking out the word "male" was first presented to the Legislature. The movement did not gain much impetus until the Nashville League was organized in the fall of this year and Chattanooga and Morrison soon followed. On Jan. 10-12, 1912, the association with its five virile infant leagues met in Nashville and plans for state-wide organization began. Miss Sarah Barnwell Elliott, an eminent writer, was unanimously chosen president. In October, 1913, the State convention met in Morristown and eight leagues answered the roll call.
The work in the Legislature naturally always fell heavily upon the Nashville League and from 1913 to 1919 the lobby was composed principally of its members. The first real effort to break down the prejudice of the legislators was in 1913, when Miss Elliott and Mrs. Guilford Dudley asked for an audience for Miss Laura Clay, president of the Kentucky association, and Miss Mary Johnston of Virginia, the novelist. This was granted and Miss Elliott was the first woman to address the Legislature, although no bill was before it.
At a called meeting of the Executive Board, at Memphis in May, 1914, the resignation of Miss Elliott was regretfully accepted and Mrs. L. Crozier French succeeded her. At the State convention held October 29, 30 in Knoxville a division occurred and some of the delegates, refusing to be headed by Mrs. French, elected as president Mrs. James M. McCormack, who was first vice-president. Mrs. French was unanimously elected by a part of the original association, which had obtained a charter October 13, incorporating the name Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association. This association continued to be a dominating force in suffrage activities. Mrs. French resigned the presidency April 1, 1915, and her unexpired term was filled by the vice-president-at-large, Mrs. John M. Kenny of Nashville. The holding of the annual convention of the National Association in Nashville Nov. 12-17, 1914, was the turning point in the history of suffrage in Tennessee because of its far-reaching educational propaganda and because Nashville was the political center of the State.
Mrs. Dudley was elected president at the State convention held at Jackson in October, 1915. She went to east, west and middle Tennessee, visiting in the first year of her administration nineteen towns, many of them twice, and assisting the Campaign Committee in organizing fourteen. She made addresses in twenty-two different cities. Toward the end of the year Miss Sue S. White, of Jackson, the recording secretary, a court stenographer and business woman, gave a month to organizing the headquarters staff and making plans to carry forward the work in a businesslike way.[165]
Mrs. Catt was making a strong effort to have the various States follow the same policy at the same time and thereby each could contribute to the national victory. With the view of securing woman suffrage planks in both Democratic and Republican national platforms, each association was asked to secure endorsement from its political State conventions. Early in January, 1916, Mrs. Dudley and Mrs. Kenny went before the executive committees of both parties, asking for a plank in the platforms and also that delegates be instructed to vote for a suffrage plank in the national platform this year. In May Mrs. Dudley spoke before the platform committees and the conventions of both endorsed woman suffrage. Former Governor Ben Hooper, Mr. and Mrs. James S. Beasley, the Hon. H. Clay Evans and Harry Anderson were of much assistance with the Republicans and Governor Tom C. Rye and U. S. Senator Kenneth D. McKellar secured the resolution from the Democrats.
Tennessee sent seven women to the Republican national convention in Chicago, who marched in the famous parade through wind and rain to the convention hall, Mrs. Dudley carrying the State suffrage banner. Eleven women went to the Democratic national convention in St. Louis, where they stood bravely in the "golden lane" through which the delegates marched to the convention. Mrs. Dudley was chosen to address the Tennessee delegation and it was a proud moment for the women of the State when they voted solidly for the suffrage plank. In October farewell banquets to congressmen on the eve of their departure for Washington, to influence their votes for the Federal Suffrage Amendment, were given in Knoxville, Nashville and Memphis. The State Federation of Women's Clubs endorsed woman suffrage this year by a large majority, under the leadership of Mrs. George Fort Milton of Chattanooga and Mrs. D. T. Kimbrough of Nashville. Other endorsements were those of the Southern Federation of Labor (unanimous), obtained through the efforts of Mrs. Walter Jackson of Murfreesboro; the Tennessee Women's Press and Authors' Club, through Miss Libbie Morrow; the State conventions of the Beemen, the Nurserymen and the Horticulturists, at the request of Mrs. Kimbrough.