By PETER S. FERRARA
Columnist
—
Here's a question: Where did you learn how to read? I don't remember anybody teaching me but obviously somebody did. I do remember lots of classes later on about grammar, usage, punctuation, and creative writing -- I just don't recall who taught me how to read in the first place.
In all likelihood I learned while sitting on the lap of an adult -- most likely my Mom or Grandma -- and having a story read to me from a book. Maybe it was "The Little Engine That Could," an heroic tale of a likeable locomotive overcoming the climb up a mighty hill. "I think I can, I think I can," the little engine chanted as it struggled up a steep incline. By the end of the story, the train made it up and over the top, I had pretty well memorized the book, and most importantly I had begun to differentiate words based on their letters.
If by chance I was sitting on my grandmother's lap, she might have told me a different story about climbing up a steep hill. It wouldn't have been about a little engine. Instead, it could have been about a woman trying to receive one of the greatest gifts this country can bestow upon a person: the right to vote. You see, my Grandmother -- Myrtle Ruth Alee Smith -- had lived half her life without being able to vote. It wasn't just her. None of her gender were guaranteed that right under the United States Constitution.
All that changed on what some men of the time called Black Thursday -- August 26th, 1920. That's when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed. It was a simple statement: "The right of citizens to vote shall not be abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." But to read some of the commentaries in the newspapers of the day, you'd think, as Chicken Little said in another child's fable, that "the sky is falling, the sky is falling."
Wyoming had led the way. When it went from Territory to statehood in 1890, Wyoming had already granted women the right to vote. By 1900, Utah, Colorado, and Idaho had all joined Wyoming in that regard. Funny that those states, not known today for being hotbeds of social change, would have led the way, but they did. When Teddy Roosevelt ran for president as the candidate of the Progressive Party, also called the Bull Moose Party, he supported a plank in his platform guaranteeing women the right to vote, also called woman's suffrage.
It wasn't until 1920 that this suffrage amendment had a chance to pass. It was passionately opposed by all of the southern states, the same ones which had fought the Civil War -- an oxymoron if ever there was one -- to preserve slavery and the plantation lifestyle it enabled. Eventually the decision came down to one man in the Tennessee House of Representatives. His name was Harry Burns and he was just 24 years old when he surprised everybody by casting the deciding vote in favor of women's suffrage.
Harry Burns changed history with a stroke of the pen. In his pocket, Harry had a letter from his mother which urged him to support a woman's right to vote. It read, in part: "Don't forget to be a good boy... and vote for suffrage." So Harry did what his mother told him and today women cast their ballots just as men can.
Like the "Little Engine That Could," it had been very hard to gain this right for women. That suffrage amendment had been introduced in Congress every year starting in 1878, and for 41 years it had been shot down. Susan B. Anthony had gone to jail for daring to vote illegally in the 1872 election. In that same year, a suffragette named Myra Bradwell wanted to become a lawyer. But her state of Illinois specifically barred women from being lawyers by refusing to admit them to the bar. Myra sued, and the case of Bradwell versus Illnois went all the way to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court was unanimous in its decision: Women were not to vote or be allowed to practice law as attorneys. The Supreme Court Justice Bradley wrote in his opinion: "It is true that many women are unmarried and not affected by any of the duties, complications, and incapacities arising out of the married state, but these are exceptions to the general rule. The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator. And the rules of civil society must be adapted to the general constitution of things, and cannot be based upon exceptional cases." So said the Court one and all.
Today, we take a woman's right to vote as a good and proper thing -- not exceptional at all. But we should always try to learn from history, however unpleasant the facts it might reveal. There is lots of talk these days about avoiding an "activist court," one that might stray from the U.S. Constitution as written and promote social change from the bench. Over and over we hear stalwart supporters of the status quo ("the way things were") arguing against judicial appointments who aim to change things and shake them up as though the Constitution were written in stone and ought never to be amended.
If those who hold that "strict constructionist" view had their way back in 1920, women would still be second class citizens unable to cast their vote. But the Constitution itself recognizes that change is inevitable and that what might once have been the way those in power thought needs to adapt to the progress civilization must make if mankind is to survive. That's why it contains precise instructions on how to be altered and amended. For me, the lesson this teaches is that we must not try to freeze time and say "from this point forward we will allow no change in how we live, govern ourselves, pray, and raise our families." Time cannot be stopped. Progress happens in spite of the chorus of naysayers which always opposes what is new and necessary.
What has kept us going all these thousands of years is our capacity to grow and adapt. Evolution is the process that rewards successful adaptation and change. To pretend otherwise is to suggest that humanity has gone as far as it ever will and needs no more change in life's most important details. This is not just wrong-- it's degrading and dangerous. Those who would stand in the way of mankind's advancement have learned nothing from history.
So as we prepare to celebrate (or at least acknowledge) what happened for women back in 1920, I tip my hat to Tennessee's Harry Burns. But even more, I salute Harry's mother, who had evidently raise her son to be "a good boy." Way to go, Mrs. Burns. To quote a song Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle wrote in 1921, the year after women gained the right to vote: "I'm just wild about Harry!" And a special tip of the cowboy hat to the wingnuts of Wyoming, who dared to believe women should have the same rights as men.
