Women’s Suffrage Monument Taking Shape As Organizers Try To Decide Where To Put It

A memorial to the women who fought for the vote in Tennessee nearly a hundred years ago will get an unveiling of sorts this week. The monument has been four years in the making, and its final home still hasn’t been determined.

In 1920, by a margin of just one vote, this state’s legislature became the linchpin to ratifying the 19^th amendment. Paula Casey puts it succinctly:“All American women vote today thanks to Tennessee.”

By the centennial anniversary of that vote, Casey hopes to have statues of suffragist leaders in major cities across the state. She’s in charge of the efforts to raise money and find locations for the monuments.

The centerpiece is the one intended for Nashville. It depicts five key leaders in bronze: Nashvillians Anne Dallas Dudley and Frankie Pierce; Jackson’s Sue Shelton White; and Abby Crawford of Chattanooga, all marching alongside Carrie Milton Chapman, a national leader in the movement who spent the summer of 1920 in Nashville, helping persuade legislators to vote for ratification.

“All of them have sort of a determined look about them. They look strong and they sort of have their eyes on the horizon.” Sculptor Alan LeQuire says that forward gaze is a particularly important detail because, as he puts it, “what they did they did for subsequent generations of women.”

Images on the base will honor those later generations, specifically Jane Eskind — who was the first woman to win a statewide election — and the first two women to reach the top levels of leadership in the legislature: Lois DeBerry and Beth Harwell.

The state had designated a place for the monument in the shadow of the state capitol. But the group paying for the statue instead decided to pursue another location, likely either in Centennial Park — where Nashville suffragist Anne Dallas Dudley led marches — or near the Hermitage Hotel, where the pro-suffrage movement organized its efforts in 1920.

At a private event Wednesday, donors will get their first look at the first two bronzes back from the foundry and the rest of the monument in various stages of completion. LeQuire expects to finish the statues in the spring.