Last week marked the centennial of ratification of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote. 100 years sounds like a long time, but as Face the Nation's Margaret Brennan explains, a right we take for granted was a very long time in coming. Last Tuesday, with banners, bells, streamers. And skydives.
Nashville celebrated the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote. We the women marched and sang and spoke. Roseanne Cash added her voice to the celebration. We the women earned it to vote.
Around Nashville and around Tennessee, we all rang bells. And I rang one from here in New York. But back in 1920, the city was stunned to silence. Bells and whistles and...
All kinds of things were ringing across the country, but not in Nashville. It was still too raw, controversial. Nashville attorneys Jeannie Nelson and Margaret Bem raised almost $4 million to create a Votes for Women room at the Nashville Public Library. We really want to make sure that when people leave this room, they understand that women weren't given the vote.
That it was a bitter struggle. It was a battle. And it almost didn't happen. By August of 1920, 35 states had ratified the 19th Amendment.
Only one more was needed. The suffragists realized that there's only one state where it's at all possible that they might be able to eke this out, and that is Tennessee. Historian Elaine Weiss has written about that pivotal moment.
They had opposition files. They did. They had to learn to take hold of the levers of power, and they had to learn the game. Leading suffragists like Carrie Chapman Catt gathered at the Hermitage Hotel.
Carrie Chapman Catt was the leader of the main suffrage organization. Historian Susan Ware. She'd been involved in the movement since the 1880s. She's ready to bring this to a close. Oh dear, what can the matter be dear, dear?
And... army of anti-suffragists was there as well. So what is their rationale? For some, it is a religious and moral decision. Some feel that women seeking equality will lead to a disruption of gender roles.
For others, they are, especially in the South, they are racist and they don't want Black women to vote. Also weighing in on the anti-suffrage side. There are corporate interests that don't want women to get the ballot. They fear that if women can vote, they are going to want to abolish child labor. Fearing that female voters would block any repeal of prohibition, the liquor lobby kept a suite on the eighth floor of the hotel.
Free drinks for legislators 24-7. They're liquoring up the legislators. You bet. And Carrie Chapman Catt asks at one point, is every legislator drunk?
And she's told yes. Yes, they are. The challenge of women's suffrage was always that it was going to be men who were going to make the decision.
And you had to be able to find ways to encourage them to perhaps take a step that they might not otherwise. The stakes were high with the 1920 presidential election just around the corner. There are 10 weeks out from an election in which it's unclear whether or not 27 million Americans will be able to vote or not. Yeah, the dreams of three generations of suffragists and 27 million women are riding on this.
Daughters of freedom, arise in your midst. It had been a long road since Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. held one of the first equal rights conventions in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. Women had marched. They had organized.
They had lobbied Congress, picketed the White House, and gotten arrested. And now, on the eve of the vote in Tennessee... The night before, the suffragists realized they do the math, and they're not going to be able to pull it out. They're going to be a little bit short.
Their support has just dissolved. The next morning, as crowds gather at the Statehouse, 24-year-old Harry T. Byrne intends to vote no. That morning, he receives a letter from his mother. She says, I've noticed that in the newspapers it doesn't say that you're supporting... Ratification.
Be a good boy and support Mrs. Catt and get ratification through. Be a good boy. Be a good boy.
And he votes aye. And pandemonium ensues. I always favored votes for women.
In 1963, Byrne told CBS's Walter Cronkite about that day. When I was confronted with the fact that I was going to go on record for time and eternity on the merits of the question, I voted in favor of ratification. On August 26, 1920, the Susan B. Anthony Amendment becomes the law of the land. An 80-year-old struggle is won.
As Carrie Chapman Catt put it, young suffragists who helped forge the last links of that chain were not born when it began. Old suffragists who forged the first links were dead when it ended. But for black women, the fight was far from over.
Black women anticipate that even after the 19th Amendment is ratified, that they will face poll taxes, they will face literacy tests, they will face intimidation and violence. Martha S. Jones has written about black women's role in the continuing fight for equality. Black suffragists are...
The universal suffragists. From the beginning of the 19th century on through the 19th Amendment and all the way to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, it is African American women who sound the call, no racism, no sexism in American politics. Testimony to the strength, steeliness, and diversity of the women who fought for equal rights and continue to do so today. When you're asking what is the role of women, who gets to vote, and those in power, what they do sometimes to keep people from voting, all of those issues were there in 1920, and they're still here today.