Boomer Women and One Huge Thank You to Mrs. Burn!
Those of you who regularly read Feisty Side of Fifty know I’m unabashedly proud of my baby boomer sisters. As a generation of women, we’ve made gigantic and far-reaching strides in righting numerous social inequities. Our greatest achievement, however, may likely be found in the strides we’ve made in gender parity. Since the late 1960s, when many of us came of age, we’ve challenged and changed the formerly rigid sex-based roles found the job market, commerce, and government. And, yes, we even changed the gender-determined roles found in the home front. (Sorry, June Cleaver!)
But, after patting ourselves on the back, we need to recognize there were some pretty amazing women who led the charge decades before we were born. The last weeks of August mark the anniversary of their greatest and most triumphant accomplishment—Women’s Suffrage.
Every grammar school student knows our country was founded on the assurance of freedom and the pursuit of happiness for every citizen. Well—to be more specific—every white, male citizen! As foundational and inalienable as these rights were, such triumphs of democracy were reserved for men and men alone. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as a number of countries in the newly industrialized world were moving toward a more democratic means of government, women were consistently, deliberately, and without remorse or doubt, denied their human rights. Male leaders, themselves freely elected by their peers, barred women from governing bodies and legally denied them their right to vote. In fact, the United States had celebrated its 144th birthday before its female citizens could cast a single ballot of their own.
The brave, spirited, and tenacious suffragettes fought valiantly to achieve this long overdue right. They bore verbal abuse, physical attack, starvation, and imprisonment in service to their cause. And, thanks to their amazing efforts, the Nineteenth Amendment granting voting rights to women was finally passed in June of 1918. However, for the amendment to become law, a minimum of thirty-six states was required to ratify it. Tennessee became the final state to do so on August 26, 1920.
Legislator Henry Burn, then twenty-four, cast the deciding vote. He had not intended to vote for the amendment but had received a note the previous evening from his mother. She told him in no uncertain terms to “vote for suffrage.” As a respectful son, he complied and explained: “I changed my vote in favor of ratification because a mother’s advice is always safest for her boy to follow.”
So happy 90th birthday Nineteenth Amendment! And many happy returns of the day! As Hillary Clinton said while running for President, “My mother was born before women had the right to vote, but my daughter was able to vote for her own mother for President.” Quite an accomplishment for ninety years, I gotta say! And one huge, albeit belated: “Thank you, Mrs. Burn—you deed indeed raise one fine son!”
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August 17th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
Thank you, Nate, for setting the record straight! In my enthusiasm for marking this important anniversary, I’d forgotten that fact and I stand corrected!
August 17th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
I very much appreciate your sentiments on the suffragists, but would like to note just one thing. In fact many American women *were* able to vote prior to 1920. Women had won full voting rights in about a third of the states before they won their final victory with adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment. Most notable was New York State, where women won a hard fought state referendum campaign in 1917.