As Kamala Harris makes history, Knoxville pays honor to Tennessee suffragists | Venable
In six words, an anonymous, hand-lettered sign in Market Square paid fitting tribute to Tennessee’s role in American history:
Thankful for Strong Women! 100 Years +
Festooned with “I Voted!” stickers, the marker had been placed on the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Memorial sometime midday Saturday — shortly after Sen. Kamala Harris became the first woman ever elected to the vice presidency of the United States.
True, Joe Biden will headline the new administration. But anyone with even a token grasp of political science understands both the significance and the timing of this moment.
Without Tennessee, women wouldn’t even have been voting, much less running for public office.
On a hot summer day in 1920, Tennessee was the 36th, and final, state to ratify the 19th Amendment, ending men’s exclusive rule of the ballot box. On a summerlike November day in 2020, there were festivities aplenty at Market Square.
Music and occasional shouts of victory filled the air. “A great day for our country,” I heard one man say as he dropped a handful of bills into a busker’s open instrument case. Motorists, some flying Biden-Harris banners, honked their horns as they proceeded along on Union Avenue.
But the most poignant scene was decidedly quieter.
It unfolded when a mother and young daughter placed flowers at the memorial.
Jennifer Harper then knelt with 4-year-old Dylan and read to her the names of suffragettes Lizzie Crozier French, Anne Dallas Dudley and Elizabeth Avery Meriwether. Plus the etched words of Abigail Scott Dunaway: “The young women of today … should remember that every inch of this freedom was bought for them at a great price. The debt that each generation owes to the past, it must pay to the future.”
I was not the only observer with damp eyes.
One block to the south of Market Square stands another tribute to Tennessee’s role in elective history. It’s the Burn Memorial, honoring Febb Burn and her son — 24-year-old State Rep. Harry T. Burn of Niota — who cast the deciding vote on suffrage in 1920.
“Do the right thing,” Febb famously had urged her son shortly before the roll was called.
Some of the words on this historic monument could well have been written in 2020: “Every vote counts. Every letter or phone call counts. One person doing the right thing can make all the difference.”
Febb Burn stands tall above her seated son in this statue. One hand rests on his shoulder. If you catch the sun just right, the shadow of a faint, yet gentle, smile creases her face.
“It took 100 years,” she might be saying, “but it was worth the wait.”
Sam Venable’s column appears every Sunday. Contact him at sam.venable@outlook.com.