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In celebration of Tennessee America 250, the Thousands of Stories and Junior Curators blogs are coming together. New posts on Thousands of Stories will complement existing posts on Junior Curators. Together they will create a more dynamic story about Tennesseans and events that contributed to the creation and development of the nation. Think of it as a crossover season for our blogs! For March, we take a look at how women expressed political sentiments before the passing of the 19th Amendment. In this month’s Junior Curator blog, learn more about Tennessee suffragist Mary Church Terrell and her contributions to the suffrage movement in “Lifting as We Climb”: Mary Church Terrell and the 19th Amendment.
By Miranda Fraley Rhodes, Ph.D.
Women in Tennessee gained partial suffrage in 1919 when the state legislature passed a bill supported by suffragists, giving women the right to vote in municipal and federal elections. The Tennessee General Assembly helped to secure women’s right to vote nationally by making Tennessee the 36th and final state needed to ratify the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution. However, the story of Tennessee women’s participation in politics began much earlier. Before they had the vote, women created objects with political symbolism, attended campaigns and other public events, and organized for change.
The Tennessee State Museum’s artifact collection helps to document women’s political activities, particularly how they used material culture to express their ideas. Rebecah Foster of Nashville chose to convey her political sentiments in this quilt, which features a striking image of an American eagle with 17 stars, the number of states in 1808. The quilt also includes a patriotic poem shown in the oval frames. This is one of the earliest known dated Tennessee quilts. Research in census and other historical records so far has not yielded details about Foster’s life. However, this quilt survives, preserving Foster’s legacy and her perspective on the nation.[1]
Quilt by Rebecah Foster, 1808, Tennessee State Museum, 78.92.1
Women have also used textiles and other artifacts to express their views on elections, political parties, and conflicts. Young Eliza Jane Womack of Lynchburg, Tennessee, was civically engaged despite politics being considered the domain of men in the early 1800s. When she was about twelve, Eliza made a sampler, which she signed and dated July 4, 1840. It has some typical features like an alphabet and a decorative border. However, instead of a religious verse or poem, Womack expressed her viewpoint on the presidential election of 1840. 
Sampler, by Eliza Jane Womack, 1840, Tennessee State Museum, 79.57.1
In this counted cross-stitch sampler, Womack included verses reading:
My own native land my Tennessee
We who fought with Washinton
We who oft with jackson
Turn your back on harison [Whig presidential candidate William Henry Harrison]
and to Victore
In contrast, about 1840, a group of women from Mount Pleasant in Maury County made a silk flag showing their support for the Whig Party. It bore the inscription: “The Whigs of Maury Often Beaten Never Vanquished.” According to N.W. Jones’ A History of Mount Pleasant, Mrs. Walker made a speech when presenting this flag at a political rally.[2] The original version of this flag is in the Tennessee State Museum’s collection (accession number 79.62). To preserve this original flag, the museum had a reproduction made for display purposes that is currently on exhibit in the Forging a Nation gallery.
Original Whigs of Maury Flag, about 1840, Tennessee State Museum, 79.62
Sarah Gwin of Carroll County reflected on the costs of war in a painting memorializing her cousin Littleberry Wright Gwin who died in the Mexican American War. She used traditional symbols of mourning such as a weeping willow and pillar surmounted by an urn in her artwork. Littleberry Wright (L.B.W.) Gwin died on October 11, 1846, at Camargo, Guanajuato, Mexico, while serving under General Gideon Pillow. Like many soldiers in this conflict, he likely perished from disease. 
Painting, “To The Memory of L.B.W. Gwin of Capt. H.F. Murray’s company of Tennessee Volunteers,” by Sarah Caroline Gwin, 1846 to 1847, Tennessee State Museum, 95.56.1
Notice the coastline and sailing ship in the background. L.B.W. Gwin was interred in Mexico, and this painting may have functioned as a symbolic means of bringing his distant physical gravesite closer to the family in their time of grief.
A group of women from Woodbury, Tennessee, made a flag in 1861 for the St. John Guards, which became Company D, 18th Tennessee Infantry, CSA. The women recorded their names inside the stars, including “Mrs. Dr. Wood, Mrs. F. G. St. John, Miss Par Wood, Mrs. Saint John, Miss Helen Wood, Mrs. Fannie St. John, Miss Jennie St. John, and Miss Annie Coleman.” The flag also features an inscription reading: “Presented to the St. John Guards by the Ladies of Woodbury on the 20th of May 1861, May the Brave Boys who March under the stars of this banner, May they Bear it triumphantly, amidst the Roar of Cannon and the Clash of arms.”
Flag of Company D, “St. John Guards,” 18th Tennessee Infantry, CSA, made by the Ladies of Woodbury, 1861, Tennessee State Museum, 3.16a
According to its provenance, this 34-star United States flag featuring an eagle in the canton (pictured below) was made in Bradley County, Tennessee about 1861 by Mrs. William Day and Mrs. Vina Burton. The inscription, “Cleveland and Hendricks” along the central white stripe, was likely a later addition. It indicates that this flag was used during the 1884 presidential election to show support for candidates Grover Cleveland and Thomas A. Hendricks.
United States Flag, by Mrs. William Day and Mrs. Vina Burton, about 1861, Tennessee State Museum, 3.147
In addition to participating in political events with men, beginning in the early 1800s Tennessee women organized their own groups to uplift their communities, assist the needy, and work for change. Female members of the Grundy Family were prominent in early women’s associations.[3] For example, in addition to helping to start the first Sunday School for poor children in Nashville, Ann Grundy served on the Board of Managers for the House of Industry for Females, organized in 1837. This organization sought to take orphaned girls and young women off the streets, out of prostitution, and train them in domestic skills.[4]
Ann Philips Rogers Grundy by Washington Bogart Cooper, 1834, Tennessee Historical Society Collection, Tennessee State Museum, 1997.85.2
Black women in Tennessee were leaders in the women’s club movement. Mary Church Terrell of Memphis helped to create the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), an organization of Black women’s groups, and served as the association’s president. This group supported many different projects to uplift their communities.[5] In 1912, Terrell, an advocate for suffrage, noted “…the elective franchise is withheld from one-half of its citizens…because …the word ‘people’ has been turned and twisted to mean all who are shrewd and wise enough to have themselves born boys instead of girls, and white instead of black.”[6]
Print, including portrait of Mary Church Terrell, about 1921, Tennessee State Museum, 2012.75.3
In Nashville, Nettie Langston Napier, who was also an officer in the NACW, served as the president of the Day Home Club. This group provided daycare and a variety of services for children and their working mothers.[7] Juno Frankie Pierce was a suffragist, teacher, and an important African American female leader. She served on the governing board for the Blue Triangle League and helped create the Nashville Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs. Pierce advocated for improving schools for African American children.[8]
Photograph, Juno Frankie Pierce, 1923, courtesy of the Sunday School Publishing Board—National Baptist Convention
The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was a national organization focused on limiting and ultimately ending the consumption of alcohol. Rooted deeply in evangelical faith, this organization attracted many southern women, and women who did not consider themselves to be social radicals. By the late 1880s, Tennessee women had formed more than 100 local WCTU chapters. This group included both African American and white women, though chapters in the state were segregated by race.[9]
Though focused on temperance, the WCTU addressed many issues of concern to women. Women in this organization helped create safe homes for poor single working women, advocated for legal reforms like raising the age of consent to protect women and girls from abuse, and other causes. The national WCTU endorsed women’s suffrage, which helped to bring the movement for women’s political rights more into the mainstream of American reform. During the 1880s, Tennessee women formed the first suffrage league in the state. Significantly, Lide Meriwether of Memphis served as the president of both the state WCTU and the first women’s suffrage organization.[10]
Silena Moore Holman of Fayetteville served as the state WCTU president beginning in 1899. She led the organization during the successful campaign to outlaw alcohol in Tennessee during 1908 to 1909. In addition to advocating for temperance, Holman was known for challenging contemporary church doctrines on the roles of women. She engaged for years in ongoing public discussions concerning this topic with David Lipscomb in the Gospel Advocate publication.[11] 
Silena Moore Holman, by Willie Betty Newman, 1916, Tennessee State Museum, 76.51
Throughout the state’s history Tennessee women have participated in the public life of their communities. Before they became voters, they crafted many different ways to express their political sentiments. By building relationships and organizing with their neighbors and women across the state, Tennessee women made their voices heard.
Miranda Fraley Rhodes, Ph.D. is the Assistant Chief Curator of the Tennessee State Museum
[1] On the quilt, see also “Tennessee State Museum to Explore the Art and Story in Tennessee Quilts with New Exhibition,” Tennessee State Museum Thousands of Stories Blogs, available online at https://tnmuseum.org/Stories/posts/tennessee-state-museum-to-explore-the-art-and-story-in-tennessee-quilts-with-new-exhibition
[2] N.W. Jones, A History of Mount Pleasant, especially, and the Western Part of Maury County, Generally; as He Remembers It (Nashville: McQuiddy Print Company, 1903).
[3] Carole Stanford Bucy, “Quiet Revolutionaries: The Grundy Women and the Beginnings of Women’s Volunteer Associations in Tennessee,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Spring 1995): 40-53.
[4] Carole Stanford Bucy, “Ann Philips Rogers Grundy,” Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, available online at http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/ann-philips-rogers-grundy/.
[5] See Beverly W. Jones, “Mary Eliza Church Terrell,” in Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, available online at https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/mary-eliza-church-terrell/; on Black women’s organizations in Memphis, see also, Beverly G. Bond, “ ‘Every Duty Incumbent Upon Them:’ ” African-American Women in Nineteenth Century Memphis,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Winter 2000), 254-273.
[6] Mary Church Terrell, “The Justice of Woman Suffrage,” originally published in The Crisis, September 1912; reprinted in Marjorie Spurill Wheeler, editor, Votes for Women!: The Woman Suffrage Movement in Tennessee, the South, and the Nation (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995), p. 154.
[7] Learotha Williams, “Nettie Langston Napier,” Nashville Conference on African American History and Culture, 47 (2018), available online at https://digitalscholarship.tnstate.edu/conference-on-african-american-history-and-culture/47
[8] Anita Shafer Goodstein, “A Rare Alliance: African American and White Women in the Tennessee Elections of 1919 and 1920,” The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 64, No. 2 (May 1998), 224-225, 227-228.
[9] Mattie Duncan Beard, The W.C.T.U. in the Volunteer State (Kingsport Press, 1962); Kriste Lindenmeyer, “Women’s Christian Temperance Union,” Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, available online at https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/womens-christian-temperance-union/.
[10] A. Elizabeth Taylor, The Woman Suffrage Movement in Tennessee, (New York: Bookman Associates,1957) p. 17.
[11] Carole Stanford Bucy, “Silena Moore Holman,” Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, available online at https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/silena-moore-holman/.
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