My Favorite Vote

My husband is the historical acadamian in the family.  A virtuoso of electoral statistics, today he’s in his element, working in numbers, trends, and tendencies the way I relish molding sentences and descriptions.  Our diverse spheres of knowledge are apparent during our nightly viewing of Jeopardy.  Geography, history, economics?  I’m awful.  And history’s my worst. 

But I do enjoy historical archeology – finding the hidden, small stories between the giant pillars of ”notable” world events that stand stalwart along our timeline.  I love to sift through the bones of forgotten characters, searching for the gems, seldom-seen and not yet deemed museum-worthy, that their lives held. 

Today reminds me of one of my favorites. 

During my Junior Year at Harvard, I participated in a mentorship program with a professor at Radcliffe College.  (Formerly the half of Harvard attended by female students, before it became coeducational.  My graduation year was actually the first that female graduates did not also receive the Radcliffe seal on their diplomas, in addition to the Harvard seal.  Everything was officially equal.  But I felt a sense of loss for that seal.  Now, Radcliffe stands as an arm of Harvard, devoted to womens’ studies and scholarship.  It isn’t independent, anymore, and something about that is sad as well.  But it’s another blog entry.) 

I worked with a few female undergraduates and our mentor-professor to sift out the women who had made the most significant contributions to the past millenium.  Of course, we couldn’t complete this task without collecting the stories of some pretty significant-but-unknown men, as well. 

From our massive piles of index cards, gleaned from months in the Widener Library stacks, emerged the name of Henry Burns, a little-known legislator from Tennessee. 

Now, most folks (even us gals who ought to know better), know precious little about the suffrage movement.  We know it was an amendment that passed Congress in 1918 and was ratified in 1920.  We may even know it was called the “Anthony Amendment,” and surely we know the names Susan B., Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and their cronies.  But we may not know that the Anthony Amendment had to be reintroduced to Congress every single year for FORTY years until it passed.  (And even then, it had to be ratified by each and every state before it became law.)  And we certainly have forgotten the names of the fellas who contributed to the effort. 

That’s where we find Mr. Burns.  By 1920, Tennessee was the only state starding in the way of women receiving the vote, nationwide.  On August 18, the Amendment came to a vote of a deadlocked state legislature.  As the story goes, a young Henry Burns, who had been a staunch opponent of ratification, received a letter from his mother shortly before he cast his vote.  Her words were to the effect of “I know you’ll do the right thing by these ladies.” 

At the last moment, Burns changed his vote. 

And that’s why I’m leaving in just a few minutes to go make mine. 

I hope that Americans realize, as we make our decisions today, that while we bicker and fret over just who should get to write a new chapter of history is about to be written, we don’t forget all the dear, small stories that put those ballots into our hands. 

They are part of the ending, too.  Do the right thing by them. 

The pic above is of Meg and my son, Judd, celebratin’ democracy.  It was taken by the enormously talented Mel Worthington.  Check out her work at www.worthington-photography.com. 

Comments