In mid-August of 1920, the widow Febb Burn sat on the porch of her small farmhouse outside Niota, Tennessee, and wrote a letter to her 23-year-old son Harry, who was in Nashville serving as a representative in the state Legislature.
In the chatty letter, she mused about the goings-on in their small community and sprinkled in a few thoughts about the political issues of the day.
“Hurry and vote for Suffrage and don’t keep them in doubt,” wrote Mrs. Burn.
Never underestimate the power of one-on-one communication like the letter Febb Burn sent to her son Harry. After reading his mother’s letter on the floor of the Tennessee capitol, young Harry Burn reversed his intent to vote “nay” and instead broke the 48-48 tie — thereby giving women the right to vote.
The vote in Tennessee upended the push by anti-suffragists to keep women from voting. Some of these surpressionists had argued that women should not be given the right to vote because, simply, most women did not want to vote. Others claimed women lacked the expertise or mental capacity to form an opinion on the important issues of the day.
Evidently they hadn’t met Febb Burn, who subscribed to four newspapers and seven magazines and was described as “strong-willed.” The widow Burn would later tell a reporter, “Suffrage has interested me for years…. I sat down on [my] little chair on the front porch and penned a few lines to my son.”
With Harry Burn’s vote, the 19th Amendment was fully ratified and 8 million women across the country cast ballots that year. Over the following decades, women proved that they did actually want to vote and that they did have opinions on the important issues of the day. In fact, by 1980, women in the United States were voting at higher rates than men, according to data from the Center for American Women and Politics.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, and women again find themselves with an opportunity to make a difference in an upcoming election. Recent polls have Joe Biden leading incumbent Donald Trump among female registered voters, 59% to 35%.
This in no way gives us an excuse to not show up at the polls in November. In 2016 we saw Donald Trump eke out an Electoral College win after losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by more than 3 million voters.
Kelly Dittmar, assistant professor of political science at Rutgers University-Camden in New Jersey, told CNBC recently that “when you’re talking about an election, especially at the presidential level where Democrats are trying to take on an incumbent, which is a hard thing to do, mobilizing and expanding your base of reliable women voters who are going to support you is important.”
Dittmar’s point is right on message and especially relevant to the residents of the battleground state Florida, who have so much at stake in this particular presidential election.
Just as Febb Burn reached out to her son regarding an important vote, it is not too early for each of us to reach out to family members, friends, co-workers and neighbors to encourage everyone to vote this November. Those wanting to cast an early vote or vote by mail in Florida due to COVID-19 can find information on their county supervisor of elections website.
There is no telling whom Febb Burn would cast her vote for in the 2020 presidential election, but we can be certain of one thing: She would vote.
Courtesy of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune
