TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Julia Wilburn on Mar 5, 2026

The Tony-winning musical "Suffs," currently touring in Nashville through Sunday at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center (TPAC), dramatizes the pivotal summer of 1920 when Tennessee cast the deciding vote to ratify the 19th Amendment and secure women's right to vote. Axios reports that the show highlights the Hermitage Hotel — less than a block away from TPAC — where suffrage and anti-suffrage activists camped out and pressured lawmakers in a frenzy of dealmaking so intense that the hotel lobby was dubbed the "third house" of the General Assembly. A key dramatic moment centers on Tennessee lawmaker Harry T. Burn, who broke a deadlock by switching his vote to yes after receiving a letter from his mother urging him to support the cause, making Tennessee the 36th and deciding state to ratify the amendment on Aug. 18, 1920.