The Weight of Their Votes: Southern Women and Political Leverage in the 1920s

Chapter Three: Making Their Bow to the Ladies: Southern Party Leaders and the Fight for New Women Voters

Making Their Bow to the Ladies Southern Party Leaders and the Fight for New Women Voters I t must have been quite a sight, in the summer and fall of 1920, as male candidates and party officials worked to woo new white women voters whom they had just recently denounced as “he-women” and supporters of “Negro Domination .”1 In mass mailings, in their stump speeches, and in their sudden solicitousness of advice from female leaders, the South’s leading men pursued women voters in a new political ritual that visibly symbolized the transformations that woman suffrage had wrought. Of course, women had been active in party politics long before they had the right to vote.2 Even in the antebellum period they had embraced partisan identities, made public presentations of their support, and attended campaign rallies. Never before, however, had southern women been the voters being rallied. Faced with long lines of women registering to vote and the prospect of hundreds of thousands of new voters at the polls, southern politicians in the fall of 1920 confronted the most substantial change in southern politics since the Populist revolt of the late nineteenth century. And unlike the growing force of discontent that characterized Populism, woman suffrage transformed an incredibly stable political status quo to a great political contest in just a few short weeks, as more than a million new voters suddenly took to southern polls. Although most of the South’s political leaders had resisted woman suffrage to the bitter end, their public attitudes changed swiftly once they stood before women voters as candidates. As one Virginian noted, “We (the women) are the most popular people ever. The candidates all think they have always wanted the women to have the vote and have always worked hard to attain this end.”3 In North Carolina’s Republican mountain district, Buncombe County Democratic leaders seemed unabashed by their election-eve aboutface as they welcomed women into the party: “Although I do not claim any credit for bringing you here, for I was against you,” one party stalwart anChapter Three 76 The Fight for New Women Voters nounced, “now that the agony is over, I welcome you heartily and extend to you the glad hand of fellowship.”4 In Tennessee, a cartoon appeared in local newspapers that captured this sudden change in southern politics. Titled “In the Spring the Young Man’s Fancy—,” it pictured politicians queued in front of the house of “Miss Suffrage,” each bearing gifts of flowers or candy.5 This depiction of politicians as suitors vividly illustrates the importance southern politicians suddenly placed on courting women’s votes. Confronted with a doubling of the electorate, candidates had no choice but to search for ways to ingratiate themselves among new women voters. Those who could touted their long-standing advocacy for woman suffrage. Others tried to romance the voters with promises to support legislation for women and children and bouquets of newfound dedication to “clean politics.” Perhaps the most conspicuous evidence of men’s efforts to court women voters appeared in newspaper advertisements and campaign broadsides. Candidates for state and local offices campaigned vigorously in the weeks before election day, and after 1920 many of their advertisements specifically targeted women voters. One broadside on behalf of U.S. Senate candidate Hubert D. Stephens was addressed, “To the White Women of Mississippi.”6 Lamar Jeffers, a candidate for Congress from Alabama, published a campaign handbill that included a letter of endorsement from Mrs. E. M. Fuller urging that “each mother” of a serviceman “should do all in their power to send him to Congress.”7 Even the Klan-sponsored newspaper made a special “appeal to Protestant Women of Atlanta” to register and vote for Political cartoon depicting the new political courtship of enfranchised women (courtesy Tennessee State Library and Archives) Image Not Available The Fight for New Women Voters 77 Klan-supported candidates: “Remember Protestants Your Ballots Are Your Bullets.”8 Candidates looking to target their appeals even more directly to women often turned to the bulletins and programs issued by state Leagues of Women Voters. There they placed advertisements that were sure to be seen by the state’s most politically active white women—women who not only voted but who also had influence over the votes of others. Though the 1920 convention of the Tennessee League of Women Voters was held several months before Tennessee ratified...