Nashville Public Television is partnering with the Tennessee State Museum and Nashville Public Library to host an online screening and discussion of NPT’s By One Vote: Woman Suffrage in the South on Aug. 18, 2020, from noon to 1:30 p.m. That date is the centennial anniversary of when Tennessee – by a single legislator’s vote in the Tennessee General Assembly – became the 36th and final state needed to ratify the 19th Amendment, ostensibly granting women in the United States the right to vote.
NPT’s screening event will take place on the ITVS OVEE screening platform. Participants may RSVP or join the screening at ovee.itvs.org/screenings/jyxmh and will be able to share opinions and questions during the event.
After the screening, Mary Makley, By One Vote’s producer, will lead a discussion with Carole Bucy, Ph.D., Davidson County Historian and professor of history, Volunteer State Community College; Beverly Bond, Ph.D., associate professor of history, University of Memphis; and historian/author Elaine Weiss (The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote); all of whom appear in the documentary.
Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash narrates By One Vote: Woman Suffrage in the South, a chronicle of events leading to the turbulent, nail-biting showdown that took place Aug. 18, 1920, in the Tennessee General Assembly. The U.S. woman’s suffrage movement began in the Northeast as an offshoot of the anti-slavery movement. By One Vote: Woman Suffrage in the South tells the lesser-known history of the efforts by Southern women to gain the vote in the years following the Civil War through 1920.
NPT’s documentary highlights major figures in Tennessee’s suffrage movement such as Anne Dallas Dudley and Sue Shelton White; as well as anti-suffragist Josephine Pearson and key legislator Harry T. Burn. Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul are among the national activists referenced in the documentary.
More NPT and PBS programming and resources related to the centennial celebration are available at wnpt.org/suffrage-100. Learn more about Women’s Suffrage Centennial commemoration events in Nashville at visitmusiccity.com/19thamendment.
Partner extras
The Tennessee State Museum’s Ratified! Tennessee Women and the Right to Vote is a new exhibition commemorating the centennial of the passage of the 19th Amendment, curated by the museum’s Miranda Fraley Rhodes, Ph.D. Ratified! tells an inclusive story of suffrage activity throughout the state, in the decades leading up the vote and its ramifications in the years that followed. The show includes artifacts, documents, archival photos, large-scale graphics, videos and interactive elements. Footage from NPT’s By One Vote: Woman Suffrage in the South is also included in the exhibition. Ratified! spans two galleries and 8,000 square feet, and remains on view into 2021.
Nashville Public Library’s Votes for Women: Legacy of the 19th Amendment tells the pivotal and dramatic story of Nashville’s role in winning women the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The exhibit will be located at the Main Library and will provide a space to explore the core themes surrounding women’s roles, democracy, and power. Votes for Women’s virtual opening is set for Aug. 18, 2020.