The Woman's Hour

Pearson is a middle-aged unmarried academic and a native of Tennessee. She holds the conservative, white supremacist values of the Old South and makes a deathbed promise to her mother that she will fight against women’s suffrage. Pearson fears that giving women the vote will not give women any real advantages, but will instead lead to greater rights for Black people and will weaken the power of states relative to that of the federal government—concerns commonly voiced by former Confederate states unwilling to back down from Jim Crow laws. Pearson writes colorful opinion pieces and propaganda intended to sway the legislators in Nashville to defeat the amendment.

White is a protégé of Alice Paul, the driving force behind NWP (National Woman’s Party). Although White originally worked for NAWSA, she is forced out after participating in an NWP protest in front of the White House. Paul chooses White to spearhead the campaign in Nashville because White is a Tennessee native and may be more acceptable to local politicians than a Yankee lobbyist might be. Frequently feeling out of her depth, White makes a valiant effort to rally her limited resources and convince Tennessee politicians to vote in favor of the amendment. Sadly, White never combines her forces with Catt’s—their factions are unwilling to cooperate even though their end goal is the same.

Tennessee’s Democratic Governor Roberts is a well-meaning but dull politician who is up for reelection. He hates the idea of calling a special session on the Nineteenth Amendment because his political enemies might use this event as ammunition to derail him. President Woodrow Wilson orders the governor to support ratification, and Roberts is loyal to his party’s leader. Even though the Suffs mistrust him, Roberts makes a valiant attempt to force the amendment through both houses of the legislature despite heavy opposition. He ultimately succeeds, but, afterwards, he loses his bid for reelection.

Walker is the handsome and charismatic Democratic Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives. In 1919, he supports legislation giving the women of his state limited voting rights. Inexplicably, he does an about-face in 1920 and uses every political weapon in his arsenal to prevent the amendment from passing. As the Suffs learn later, Walker has allied himself with railroad interests, and these interests want women’s suffrage defeated. Despite the number of delaying tactics and legal technicalities that Walker throws at the Suffs, he fails to stop the passage of the amendment.