Sunshine for Women Book Summaries | Home

      Printed on glossy paper with lots of color pictures and political cartoons, this book was written to accompany the exhibit "The Perfect 36" displayed at and developed by the University of Memphis which was mounted in the summer of 1995 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of woman's suffrage. A work suitable for the general audience as well as survey course in American history, this work discusses hundreds of people and organizations involved in the suffrage struggle arrayed on both sides of the issue as well as provides background information to put the suffrage struggle in the context of its time and to describe the events which provided an intellectual foundation for the revolutionary act of allowing women to vote. The Perfect 36 includes:

• Forewords by Governor Don and Martha Sundquist, Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout, and State Senator Steve Cohen

• It Happened in Nashville

  a one-page summary of the events of August 1920

• The Perfect 36 - The Exhibit

  An overview in pictures of the exhibit

• The Long Road to Nashville

  Background information including the status of women in colonial and early federal America, the impact of the American Revolution on the conception of women's place, the early Federalist concept of Republican motherhood, the legal status of women as femme covert, the abolition and temperance movements as crucibles in which women forged the earliest women's rights associations, the impact of the Civil War on the women's rights / women's suffrage movement, the split in the women's suffrage ranks following the Civil War, the role of women's charitable institutions, such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the National Council of Jewish Women, the National Association of Colored Women, and Jane Addam's Hull House, as crucibles in which women political leaders / suffragists were formed, the influence of the turn-of the century Progressive movement on the women's suffrage movement, the militancy of the National Woman's Party suffrage efforts, suffragist efforts to get the Susan B. Anthony amendment the support of various Presidents and Congresses, and the events during WW I which lead to the passage of the amendment by Congress. This article is probably one of the best short synopses of the 19th century women's movement written, focusing on national leaders and events. Remarkably, in an article only 20 pages long, the author (Dr. Janann Sherman) manages to include Carrie Chapman Catt, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Lucretia and James Mott, Benjamin Rush, William Lloyd Garrison, Abby Kelly [Foster], Mary Katherine Goddard, Abagail Adams, Emma Willard, Frances Willard, Deborah Moulson, Fredrick Douglass, Frances Wright, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe, Jane Addams, Ellen Gates Starr, Rheta Childe Dorr, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary Church Terrell, Margaret Murray Washington, Harriot Stanton Blatch, Sue Shelton White, Alice Paul, Anna Howard Shaw, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Emily Greene Balch, Rose Pastor Stokes, Crystal Eastman, Lucy Burns, Jeannette Rankin, Rose Winslow, and other suffrage and women's rights supporters as well as anti-feminist and anti-suffragists as well as providing a list of reference works for those interested in exploring the lives of those women, the culture in which they lived, and the foundations of American jurisprudence in which the activists operated. (Unfortunately this work lacks an Index which would have been quite useful.) Sherman also discusses the anti-suffragists: the liquor industry which feared the effect of the women's vote on Prohibition, capitalists who feared the women's votes regarding child labor and equal wages for men and women laws, and the churches.

• Quote . . . . Unquote

  Often witty comebacks to anti-suffrage arguments

• Pioneers, O Pioneers!

  1-3 page biographical profiles of several 19th century Tennessee women's rights and women's suffrage activists (Elizabeth Avery Meriwether and her sister-in-law Lide Smith Meriwether, Lizzie Crozier French, Anne Dallas Dudley, and Sue Shelton White) who laid the foundation for the successful ratification of the 19th amendment

• The Debate Heats Up: The Suffs and the Antis

  Reprints of articles by Jane Addams and Mary Church Terrell in support of women's suffrage and A. A. Lyon and John J. Vertrees opposed to women's suffrage.

• Women of Color, Women of Vision, Women of Courage

  Biographical sketches of three women of color with ties to Tennessee who were influential in the women's suffrage movement: Mary Church Terrell, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and J. Frankie Seay Pierce.

• The Final Showdown, Tennessee, 1920

  A 28 page article about the ratification of the 19th amendment in Tennessee including a day-by-day discussion of events during that fateful August month in 1920. Yellin talks about the in-and-outs of Tennessee and national politics during that fateful month and the influence of politics on the suffrage vote giving much attention to the role that pro-suffrage men as well as women played in the passage of the 19th amendment. Yellin was quite refreshing in that she acknowledged the role that pro-feminist men played in the passage of the 19th amendment.

• A Suffrage Sampler

        A Suffrage Timetable State-by-State, a record of the vote on the 19th amendment by the members of the Tennessee Senate and House

        Biographical essays on 2 of the most important pro-suffrage men in the ratification of the 19th amendment fight in the Tennessee legislature: then 30-year-old Nashville lawyer Joe Hanover who ran for and was elected to the Tennessee House only days before the ratification vote solely for the purpose of voting for and working for the ratification of the 19th amendment and Harry T. Burn, the young Niota legislator who went on to become a successful banker and gentleman farmer, who changed his vote to support women's suffrage when he realized that the pro-suffrage side was one vote short of that needed for ratification.

        Contemporary suffrage-related newspaper articles and editorials, pro- and anti- suffrage songs, poems, advertisements, and cartoons, reminiscence of the suffrage campaigns

• Tennessee's Forgotten Heroes: The Gallant Few

  Biographical dictionary of pro-suffrage Tennessee men

• Tennessee's Forgotten Heroines: A Suffrage Roll of Honor

  Biographical dictionary of pro-suffrage Tennessee women.

• Bibliography

• Acknowledgments

      With that here are some excerpts from the work. I was tempted to include the entire text of the 2 articles "The Long Road to Nashville" and "The Final Showdown, Tennessee, 1920." They are both very good. You will have to be satisfied with the following tidbits unless you want to get a copy of the book from your library or the publisher (Iris Press, Iris Publication Group, 1345 Oak Ridge Turnpike, Suite 328, Oak Ridge, Tenn. 37830)

Quoting Carrie Chapman Catt (p. 17):

Hundreds of women gave the accumulated possibilities of an entire lifetime, thousands gave constant interest and such aid as they could. It was a continuous, seemingly endless, chain of activity. Young suffragists who helped forge the last links of that chain were not born when it began. Old suffragists who forged the first link were dead when it ended. It is doubtful if any man, even among suffrage men, ever realized what the suffrage struggle came to mean to women before the end was allowed in America.

Why We Don't Want Men to Vote
1. Because man's place is in the army.
2. Because no really manly man wants to settle any question otherwise than by fighting about it.
3. Because if men should adopt peaceable methods women will no longer look up to them.
4. Because men will lose their charm if they step out of their natural sphere and interest themselves in other matters than feats of arms, uniforms, and drums.
5. Because men are too emotional to vote. Their conduct at baseball games and political conventions shows this, while their innate tendency to appeal to force renders them unfit for government.

Alice Duer Miller, 1915

Quoting Mary Church Terrell's article in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's magazine, The Crisis (1912)

Fredrick Douglass did many things of which I am proud, but there is nothing he ever did in his long and brilliant career in which I take greater pride than I do in his ardent advocacy of equal political rights for women, and the effective service he rendered the cause of woman suffrage sixty years ago. When the resolution demanding equal political rights for women was introduced in the meeting held at Seneca Falls, NY, in 1848, Fredrick Douglass was the only man in the convention courageous and broad-minded enough to second the motion. It was largely due to Douglass's masterful arguments and matchless eloquence that the motion was carried, in spite of the opposition of its very distinguished and powerful foes . . . .

A Suffrage Timetable State by State (pp. 110-111)
In Support of Ratification
1 Wisconsin	June 10, 1919
2 Michigan	June 10, 1919
3 Kansas	June 13, 1919
4 Ohio	June 14, 1919
5 New York	June 16, 1919
6 Illinois	June 17, 1919
7 Pennsylvania	June 24, 1919
8 Massachusetts	June 25, 1919
9 Texas	June 28, 1919
10 Iowa	July 2, 1919
11 Missouri	July 3, 1919
12 Arkansas	July 20, 1919
13 Montana	July 30, 1919
14 Nebraska	August 2, 1919
15 Minnesota	September 8, 1919
16 New Hampshire	September 10, 1919
17 Utah	September 30, 1919
18 California	November 1, 1919
19 Maine	November 5, 1919
20 North Dakota	December 1, 1919
21 South Dakota	December 4, 1919
22 Colorado	December 12, 1919
23 Rhode Island	January 6, 1920
24 Kentucky	January 6, 1920
25 Oregon	January 12, 1920
26 Indiana	January 16, 1920
27 Wyoming	January 27, 1920
28 Nevada	February 7, 1920
29 New Jersey	February 10, 1920
30 Idaho	February 11, 1920
31 Arizona	February 12, 1920
32 New Mexico	February 19, 1920
33 Oklahoma	February 27, 1920
34 West Virginia	March 10, 1920
35 Washington	March 22, 1920
36 Tennessee	August 18, 1920
Opposed to Ratification
1 Georgia	July 24, 1919
2 Alabama	September 2, 1919
3 Mississippi	January 21, 1920
4 South Carolina	January 21, 1920
5 Virginia	February 12, 1920
6 Maryland	February 12, 1920
7 Delaware	June 2, 1920
8 Louisiana	June 15, 1920
9 North Carolina	August 17, 1920
No Action on the Amendment
1 Connecticut
2 Vermont
3 Florida

Affirmative Action, Affirmative Speech

      On March 21, 1820, a United States Congressman from Columbia, Tennessee named Samuel Mayes Arnell, introduced a bill "to do justice to the female employees of the Government" in the House of Representatives. This early (perhaps earliest) version of Equal Employment Opportunity legislation, would have made "equal pay for equal work" an official government policy. It further decreed that "All job classification designations shall be held hereafter to apply to women as well as men," and that "No discrimination shall be made in favor of either sex." though the act failed to gain any support in Congress, members of the National Women Suffrage Association took notice. At their annual meeting the following year, held at the Apollo Hall in New York City, Congressman Arnell was an honored speaker. His remarks on that occasion did not disappoint his audience.

      In bringing the proposition before Congress to pay women the same price for the same work performed, I desired, not only to help those spirited, deserving women in the [government] Departments, but also to aid two-and-a-half- millions of my working sisters in this country. . . . I greatly admire and respect either a working man or woman, for I devoutly believe that "to work is to pray," and I drew my best inspiration in this great contest for justice and freedom, from a bright, sunny-faced wife, who today is far away among the hills of Tennessee. . . . Ladies, the nobility of your work, far above all ridicule, misjudgment, slander and abuse even, is the emancipation and elevation of both man and woman. the Great Republic, of which you are citizens. . . . can exist only as it is free, as it is just -- two ideas that lie, as I understand it, at the bottom of your movement. The country must continue one-sided, ill-balanced, imperfect in its civilization, until woman is admitted to that individuality which of right belongs to every human being. Therefore, I bid you God-speed in your work.

      Taken from Elinor B. Bridges, The Wheel, a monthly publication of Women's Resources Center of Memphis, September, 1977

Return to Booknotes Menu

e-mail sunshine@pinn.net