High History 4 - Tennessee History for Kids

HIGH SCHOOL HISTORY
Part Four: The Perfect 36 and the Dixie Highway

A suffragist protest in Chicago in June 1920. Sue Shelton White, a native of Chester County, is in the middle.
PHOTO: Library of Congress

As you learned in American Civics class, three-fourths of the states must ratify a proposed amendment for it to be added to the U.S. Constitution. In 1920 (when there were 48 states), Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify one of the most important amendments ever added to the Constitution -- the one extending the right to vote (or "suffrage") to women. And there was plenty of drama when the Tennessee General Assembly met in August 1920 to consider the Nineteenth Amendment.

Anne Dudley

On July 25, 1920, Governor Albert Roberts called a special session of the legislature to consider the amendment. National attention focused on Tennessee when the session began two weeks later. Suffragist activists from across the country, led by Carrie Chapman Catt, descended on Nashville’s Hermitage Hotel. Several of those activists were from Tennessee, among them Anne Dallas Dudley and Sue Shelton White.

Meanwhile, among the key officials in Tennessee in favor of the passage of the amendment were Governor Roberts and U.S. Senator Kenneth McKellar (who, by the way, became one of the longest serving U.S. Senators from 1917 to 1953). The most important government official opposed to the measure was (state) House Speaker Seth Walker of Lebanon.

This ad appeared in the Nashville Banner while the Tennessee General Assembly considered the Nineteenth Amendment.

Looking back, one might think that all women were in favor of the Nineteenth Amendment. But that was not the case. Lobbying against the so-called "Susan B. Anthony Amendment" in Nashville that year were a coalition of anti-prohibitionists, manufacturers, religious elements and white supremacists. And some Tennessee women lobbied against suffrage and even signed advertisements in the newspaper opposing suffrage. Some of them argued that if women were given the vote, a series of laws "bad for business" would be enacted. Some said, and wrote, that the passage of the amendment was contrary to biblical principles, and that the breakdown of families would result from it. And some even argued that the suffragist movement would result in the empowerment of African Americans (which most whites were against at that time).

This sculpture, commemorating the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, hangs in the Tennessee State Capitol.

That month, roses were in high demand in downtown Nashville. People opposed to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment wore red roses (or ribbons). Those in favor of its passage wore yellow roses (or ribbons).

As the special session began, supporters and opponents of the measure set up their bases in Nashville's Hermitage Hotel. For the next several days they met with legislators in an attempt to get the support of their causes. And during the next few weeks both sides would accuse each other of foul play. According to one historic essay, Catt later claimed that anti-suffrage lobbyists "used liquor, loans, bribes, promises of high office," and other means to get people to vote against the measure.

Pro-suffrage advocates, meanwhile, were being pushy as well. One Chattanooga newspaper said that a suffragist grabbed a legislator by the tie and wouldn't let him go while she vigorously stated her case to him. Finally the legislator pulled a knife from his pocket, cut himself loose, and walked away.

The state senate approved the measure first, passing it by a vote of 25-4. This sent the measure to the 99-member state house.

Harry Burn, after his historic vote
PHOTO: Sewall Belmont House Museum

People on both sides knew it would be close. In advance of that roll-call vote on August 18, 1920, both sides appeared to be deadlocked. But when the name of "Representative Burn" was called, suffragist forces were thrilled to hear him respond with "aye" instead of "nay." Burn, a little-known state representative from McMinn County, had previously been in the anti-suffrage camp. But he changed his mind and decided to vote in favor of the amendment because (as he later explained) he held in his pocket a letter from his mother urging him to vote for suffrage. "Vote for ratification and don't keep them waiting," his mother wrote. Burn's vote put the measure over the top, in spite of intense opposition (and parliamentary maneuvering) by House Speaker Seth Walker.

A few days later Governor Roberts signed the certificate of ratification and sent it to Washington. And on August 26 -- eight days after Burns' historic vote -- U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby issued a proclamation declaring the Nineteenth Amendment ratified. American women could now vote.

The Dixie Highway

Cars along the Dixie Highway in Georgia in 1915

Today highways have numbers. In the old days they had names. There was a time, for instance, when two of the state’s most important roads were known as the western and eastern legs of the Dixie Highway. And since the Dixie Highway was the first major thoroughfare connecting North and South, its emergence was important.

Prior to its development, people who tried to drive from North to South were in for an adventure – never certain if the road would be paved or what road would lead from one small town to another along the way.

Around 1914, industrialist and auto enthusiast Carl Fisher came up with the idea for a single, marked road that would lead all the way from Mackinaw City, Michigan to Miami. In April of that year a group of governors from seven states met in Chattanooga and mapped out the course. It would be known as the Dixie Highway, and it would have a west route and an east route.

An early map showing the Dixie Highway routes

The west route went through Chicago, Indianapolis, Louisville and Nashville. The east route passed through Toledo, Cincinnati, Lexington and Knoxville. Both highways met in Chattanooga and were linked through much of Georgia before splitting up again and heading to different parts of Florida. Chattanooga and Atlanta thus became the only two notable cities located on both east and west routes of the Dixie Highway.

To a nation used to rail travel, the freedom of such a highway was exciting. Chicago officials were so anxious to dedicate the road that they organized a motorcade that left the Windy City on October 9, 1915. Things started off all right, with the dignitaries making speeches in towns along the way. But it was an ill-advised trip. After the motorcade crossed the Ohio River, the roads deteriorated. After toiling 12 hours to drive the 164-mile leg from Elizabethtown, Kentucky, to Nashville, Fisher sent the following message back to the Chicago Tribune. "We don’t want tourists to make this trip for a year," said Fisher, who also organized the Indianapolis 500 auto race. "If they came now, they would regret it."

For the next few years, northern newspapers kept tabs on the state of the Dixie Highway. It was – for a while – paved, smooth and well-marked in some areas while impassable in others. And it was quite an adventure to leave Chicago for Florida with no road map and no assurance of where you could find services along the way.

Since hotels were scarce, boarding often had to be obtained at random farmhouses. One article advised that everyone who braved the journey take with them an extra long tow rope, a spade and a lantern. Gas prices went up the further south you went. "If the price in Chicago is 12 cents a gallon, it will be about 15 cents in Kentucky, 18 cents in Tennessee, 20 cents in Georgia, and 22 cents in Florida," the Tribune said.

This article about the Dixie Highway appeared in the Chicago Tribune in January 1917

But the biggest hazards were mud and treacherous roads. And nowhere were the roads as bad as they were in the Volunteer State. "Tennessee’s showing is the worst of any of the southern states on the highway," the Tribune reported about that time. A few months later the Chicago paper advised tourists to drive to Nashville and board the train rather than brave the drive. "In heavy weather . . . he [the tourist] would be advised to ship his car between Nashville and Chattanooga, with the assurance that he is over the worst of his troubles," it reported.

Warnings aside, drivers still tried to make it from Nashville to Chattanooga, and they often had quite a tale to tell when they came home. "For 15 miles we wound up hill on a road that was more like a rocky creek bed out of place," one driver wrote, talking about the trek near Monteagle, Tenn. "Recent rains had completely washed away the surface, leaving an interminable stretch of ruts and chuck holes, where only fool’s luck kept the car from hanging up."

The Dixie Highway logo

A few months later the Tribune reported that 50 percent of the tourists who braved the Nashville to Chattanooga route had to be pulled out of ditches along the way, and their mileage was limited to 50 miles a day or less.

The American entry into World War I brought development of the Dixie Highway to a halt. But it picked up again after the war, and eventually engineers and construction workers won the battle against erosion and Mother Nature. By the 1920s, the Dixie Highway became a symbol of progress for Tennessee.