August 18 · This Day in America
It comes down to Tennessee, and Tennessee comes down to one man. Thirty-five states have ratified the Nineteenth Amendment; one more makes it law. The Tennessee House is deadlocked, and Harry Burn, the youngest legislator there at twenty-four, has a red rose on his lapel — the anti-suffrage signal — and a letter in his pocket from his mother, Febb. "Hurrah, and vote for suffrage," she had written. "Don't keep them in doubt." When the roll is called, Burn says "aye." Pandemonium. He climbs out a window onto a ledge to escape the furious crowd. With that vote, the Constitution is amended so that the right to vote shall not be denied on account of sex — and 26 million American women, after 72 years of marching, arguing, and being arrested, can vote. A son listened to his mother, and a nation grew up a little.
Source: www.archives.gov
Also on this day · 1963
Less than a year earlier, federal troops and a deadly riot had forced the University of Mississippi to admit its first Black student. For two semesters, classmates turned their backs at lunch and bounced basketballs over his dorm room all night. On this day, James Meredith accepts his diploma in political science — the first Black graduate of Ole Miss. He had been threatened, surrounded, and isolated. He finished anyway, and the door stayed open behind him.
Source: www.britannica.com
“Hurrah, and vote for suffrage, and don't keep them in doubt.”Febb Burn, in a letter to her son Harry, 1920