Tennessee's ratification provided the decisive 36th state needed, securing the constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote nationwide.
On August 18, 1920, the Tennessee General Assembly ratified the Nineteenth Amendment by a razor-thin margin of 50 to 46 votes, making it the thirty-sixth state to do so and thus providing the three-fourths majority of states required under Article V of the Constitution for ratification. This dramatic vote is famously remembered for the actions of 24-year-old state representative Harry T. Burn, who switched his vote to 'aye' at the urging of a letter from his mother, breaking a tie and securing passage.
The Tennessee ratification came after a grueling, emotionally charged legislative battle nicknamed the 'War of the Roses,' in which supporters and opponents of suffrage wore yellow and red roses, respectively, to signal their positions. Suffragist leaders including Carrie Chapman Catt of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and Alice Paul of the National Woman's Party had lobbied intensively in Nashville for the amendment's passage.
Tennessee's vote broke a long stalemate; several other Southern states had already rejected the amendment, and suffragists desperately needed one more state. This victory represented the culmination of over seventy years of organized activism dating back to the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, and it is regarded as one of the most consequential moments in American democratic history, extending the franchise to millions of women.