The Road to Ratification
“If Delaware does not ratify the suffrage amendment we will go to Chicago and demand the reason why. I will walk to Chicago if necessary to make our views and protests known. There are plenty of women who would join me.”
— Mrs. Benigna Green Kalb, Houston, TX, from Women to Camp on Republican Trail, Commercial Appeal May 20, 1920.
WHO WILL BE THE 36TH?
In the early states, the amendment breezed through. Within a month, nine had ratified. In another month, five more joined. However, there were defeats, mostly in the South. Georgia was the first state to reject ratification, with Alabama, Carolina, Virginia, and Mississippi soon following their lead. To stop the defeats, prominent suffragists like Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul went on the offensive, dispatching teams of organizers to states that were slow to ratify.
“How long must women wait for liberty?”
Banner carried by suffrage pioneers, Rev. Olympia Brown and Mrs. Anna Kendall, from Women Will Picket Chicago Convention, Commercial Appeal June 7, 1920.
![](https://www.memphislibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/img-Suffrage-Ratification_Suffrage0074a-2.jpg)
The plan was to whip up local support, energizing activists who could then take the fight directly to their state legislature. Catt, in particular, tried to project a positive front, making a distinct effort to give the impression that ratification was just a matter of time. They also enlisted the help of nationally notable politicians like President Woodrow Wilson and Tennessee senator Kenneth McKellar. Being one of the few ardently pro-suffrage southern Democrats, McKellar was a rare commodity in a region hostile to the suffrage movement.
President Wilson, the first southern born president since before the Civil War, used his influence to prod less than enthusiastic Democratic governors to call their state legislatures into session to approve the amendment. Repeatedly pushed by pro-suffrage forces, Tennessee governor Albert Roberts had been hiding behind the convenient political excuse that his state’s constitution prevented the legislature from considering the amendment until after the fall elections.
By the end of March 1920, the total number of states having ratified stood at thirty five, one short of the required three-fourths to make the amendment a permanent addition to the Constitution.
Senator McKellar, a Memphian, had watched with concern as the ratification effort failed in Alabama and Virginia. Now as the suffrage movement targeted Delaware, he waded into the fray. He also kept tabs on the push for ratification in Louisiana, where the governor had pledged to block ratification.
Pro-suffrage governor of Delaware, John G. Townsend, called his state’s legislature into a special session. Unfortunately, the effort backfired when the amendment stalled during a procedural vote, allowing anti-suffrage forces to claim an upset victory in a state that had seemed sure to ratify.
![](https://www.memphislibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/img-Suffrage-Ratification-_p15138coll27.jpg)
A political cartoon published in the Baltimore Evening Sun showing a woman sitting on a trunk at a train station with her luggage around her labeled “Votes for Women” and a bulletin on the wall that reads “No. 36 to Ratification Overdue,” comparing ratification of the 19th Amendment to a train running late. Women’s Suffrage in Tennessee, Tennessee State Library and Archives ID# 45410.
Things only got worse. In July, Louisiana rejected ratification as well. Though not a surprise, the defeat came at a poor time. It conveyed the impression that ratification might be going backward, an idea that those opposed to women’s suffrage were keen to magnify. In the South, Florida and North Carolina seemed unlikely to ratify. And in the North, rabidly anti-suffrage governors in Connecticut and Vermont refused to convene their state legislatures for special sessions.
Luckily, a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court regarding a different constitutional amendment opened up a new front in the ratification fight and offered the suffrage movement an unexpected chance to grab the thirty-sixth state. In a lawsuit involving the Eighteenth Amendment, the court ruled that no state law could obstruct the ratification of a constitutional amendment. For the suffrage leaders, this immediately changed the political landscape. Specifically, it put Tennessee back in play. Governor Albert Roberts could no longer claim that the state’s constitution prohibited him from calling a special session of the legislature to consider the amendment. Still, facing a difficult re-election, Governor Roberts was reluctant to engage in the political battle over women’s suffrage.
Suffragists like Catherine Talty Kenny of Nashville deployed strategic political pressure by getting the White House to intervene. Extremely popular in the overwhelmingly Democratic South, Wilson sent a telegram to the governor urging him to do, “a real service to the party and to the nation”. When Roberts continued to stall, the president went public with his frustration. Sufficiently chastised, the governor relented and called a special session, convening the Tennessee’ legislature to consider the amendment granting women the right to vote.
ITEMS FROM THE COLLECTION
![This is a list of the officers of the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Association elected on June 5 1919, the day after the U.S. Senate voted to pass the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, sending it on to the states to ratify. Included in the list are Lula Thomas Colyar Reese, shown here as Mrs. Isaac Reese. She was one of two women first elected to the Memphis school board. Also named is Anne Dallas Dudley, shown here as Mrs. Guilford Dudley. She played a prominent role in getting Tennessee to ratify the 19th Amendment. Further, there is Abby Crawford Milton. Shown here as Mrs. George F. Milton, she was the last president of the Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association.](https://www.memphislibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/cache/img-Suffrage_Ratification_SKDM0032/2994346274.jpg)
![Telegram from Mrs. John D. McNeel, chairman of Alabama's Ratification Committee, asking for Senator McKellar's support and words of endorsement that could be used in a campaign for ratification by Alabama's legislature.](https://www.memphislibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/cache/img-Suffrage-Ratification_SKDM0033a/987141912.jpg)
![Copy of a letter from Senator Kenneth D. McKellar to Mrs. John D. McNeel, who served as chairman of Alabama's Ratification Committee. The letter is in response to Mrs. McNeel's request for McKellar's views and an endorsement that could be used as part of a campaign for ratification in Alabama.](https://www.memphislibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/cache/img-Suffrage-Ratification_SKDM0033b/97033984.jpg)
![Western Union telegram from Adele Clark of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia to U.S. Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee concerning her home state's failure to ratify the 19th Amendment.](https://www.memphislibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/cache/img-Suffrage-Ratification_Suffrage0023/3872993805.jpg)
![Telegram from U.S. Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee to Governor Albert Roberts of the same state asking if the governor will call a special session of the legislature to ratify the amendment if Delaware does not claim the 36th spot.](https://www.memphislibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/cache/img-Suffrage-Ratification_Suffrage0013/2398087094.jpg)
![Telegram from Tennessee Governor Albert H. Roberts to U.S. Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee. The telegram concerns efforts to get Tennessee to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. Under Tennessee's Constitution, the state could not ratify an amendment proposed by Congress until a new state legislature had been elected. Because of this provision, Governor Roberts thought he was unable to call a special session of the legislature to ratify the amendment. However, a U.S. Supreme Court later that year overturned that part of the state constitution and allowed the governor to call a special session.](https://www.memphislibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/cache/img-Suffrage-Ratification_SKDM0012/212866222.jpg)
![This is the section of the Tennessee Constitution that originally made it seem as if the state could not ratify the 19th Amendment until a new state legislature had been elected. However, this section of the state constitution was overturned by a U.S. Supreme Court case involving the state of Ohio and the Eighteenth Amendment.](https://www.memphislibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/cache/img-Suffrage-Ratification_SKDM0040/34218163.jpg)
![Correspondence between Dora Lewis of the National Woman's Party and U.S. Senator Kenneth Douglas McKellar of Tennessee. McKellar had recently been in Delaware trying to lobby politicians in that state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. His efforts were unsuccessful, and Delaware rejected the amendment in June 1920.](https://www.memphislibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/cache/img-Suffrage-Ratification_SKDM0014/1345962514.jpg)
!["This is a time for work and not a time for rejoicing..." Letter from Sue Shelton White, the Tennessee chair of the National Woman's Party, to the rank and file of that organization in Tennessee. The letter warns readers not to assume ratification of the 19th Amendment would be inevitable.](https://www.memphislibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/cache/img-Suffrage-Ratification_Suffrage0062/2294784503.jpg)
![Telegram from Senator Kenneth McKellar to Mrs. Lyida W. Holmes discussing the prospect of Louisiana ratifying the Nineteenth Amendment and what that would mean for the Democratic Party.](https://www.memphislibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/cache/img-Suffrage-Ratification_Suffrage0017/3013921489.jpg)
![Handwritten speech, with edits, by prominent Memphis suffragist Martha Allen, calling for the creation of what would be the Tennessee League of Women Voters. In the speech, Allen sates, "we are here assembled at this convention as the equal suffrage forces of Tennessee to celebrate our final and glorious victory of womens enfranchisement", and she calls for "the dissolving and adjournment of the equal Suffrage forces of Tennessee - with all of their auxiliaries, to be merged into a more advanced field of usefulness and progress."](https://www.memphislibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/cache/img-Suffrage-Ratification_Suffrage0020/1012802694.jpg)
![Letter from Abby Crawford Milton, president of the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Association, to Martha Allen concerning the dissolution of that organization in favor of the creation of the Tennessee League of Women Voters. The change from one organization to the other took place at a meeting of Tennessee suffragists in Nashville on May 18, 1920.](https://www.memphislibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/cache/img-Suffrage-Ratification_Suffrage0064/446740760.jpg)
![Typed letter from Tennessee Governor Albert H. Roberts to Senator Kenneth McKellar about calling a special session of the legislature to ratify the 19th Amendment. After a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a case involving the state of Ohio and the Eighteenth Amendment, the governor was free to call a special session of the legislature to consider ratifying the Nineteenth Amendment.](https://www.memphislibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/cache/img-Suffrage-Ratification_SKDM0042/3670669557.jpg)