Tennessee's role in women's suffrage commemorated in Broadway musical
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The cast of the touring production of "Suffs." Photo: Courtesy of the Tennessee Performing Arts Center
Tennessee's starring role in the fight for women's suffrage is getting the Broadway treatment in Nashville this week.
The big picture: The Tony-winning musical "Suffs," which is touring in Nashville through Sunday, revisits the summer of 1920, when Tennessee lawmakers cast the deciding vote to ratify the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote.
The intrigue: Performances of "Suffs" are taking place at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, just down the street from where the historic action took place.
Flashback: The Hermitage Hotel became the epicenter of the women's suffrage movement in the run-up to the pivotal ratification vote in Tennessee.
- "This is where all the deals were made," Davidson County historian Carole Bucy told PBS in 2022. "This was the scene of the action."
- "Suffs" reflects that. A pivotal sequence in the second half of the musical takes place at the hotel.
State of play: Activists on both sides of the issue used the hotel as a home base, meeting with lawmakers there to plead their cases. The lobby was the site of so much dealmaking and arm-twisting that it was referred to as the "third house" of the General Assembly.
- Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, moved into Suite 309. Anti-suffrage leaders set up camp on the eighth floor.
Zoom in: The musical also features Tennessee lawmaker Harry T. Burn, who famously switched his vote from no to yes, breaking a deadlock and securing final approval for the amendment.
- The musical dramatizes the moment Burn received a letter from his mother, who urged him to support women's suffrage.
- "Don't forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt," the letter read, according to the National Parks Service.
The bottom line: On Aug. 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment. That brought it to the necessary threshold to become part of the U.S. Constitution.
- After the vote, Burn ran to the Hermitage to call his mother with the news.
If you go: Tickets are still available for the Nashville performances, starting at $51.90.
- When Nashville's downtown library branch reopens, you can visit the Votes for Women Room, which traces the history of the movement.