Rural Realities Shape Rural Tennessee Women’s Attitudes about Woman Suffrage

Abstract

The 19th Amendment in America gave women the right to vote and federally protected their enfranchisement. Tennessee played a major role in the passage of the amendment by being the 36th state to ratify. During and after the suffrage movement, scholarship has explored the work of women and men in the fight for suffrage both nationally and in the state of Tennessee, but as with all histories there are gaps in the narrative. In the past, rural women of Tennessee have been depicted as indifferent to suffrage or have been left out of the Tennessee suffrage story entirely. By exploring the suffrage and progressive movements in which rural women of Tennessee participated, the scholarship gains a fuller picture of the political and cultural issues that surrounded suffrage in the state. Rural representation in the suffrage story brings to light the need to fill their silence both in scholarship and on the physical historical landscape.