Tennessee Women in the Progressive Era

Discussions of Tennessee women's history during the Progressive Era tend to focus narrowlyon the critical issue of suffrage and the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. While theachievement of Tennessee's suffragists remains a feather in the state's historic cap-pushingthe legislature to cast the votes that settled the issue for the nation-reform-minded Tennesseewomen in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries participated in a wide range of otherpublic-sphere activities. The first exploration of the work and lives of Progressive Era Tennesseewomen beyond their involvement in the battle for the right to vote, this pioneering compilationprovides a fuller portrait of the work undertaken by these bold activists to improve the lives oftheir fellow citizens. Ranging in subject matter from the role of women's missionary organizations and effortsto end lynching to the challenges of agricultural reform and the development of strongereducational institutions, these essays consider a wide variety of reform efforts that engagedprogressive women in Tennessee before, during, and after the suffrage movement. Throughout,the contributors emphasize the influence of religion on women's reform efforts and examine theways in which these women expanded their public roles while at the same time professingloyalty to more traditional models of womanhood. In demonstrating Tennessee women'sengagement with politics long before they had the vote, ran for office, or served on juries, theseessays also support the argument that a broader definition of "politics" permits a fullerincorporation of women's public activities into U.S. political history. By focusing on the actual work reform-minded women performed, whether paidemployment or volunteer efforts, this anthology illustrates myriad ways in which theseindividuals engaged their communities and reveals the motivations that drove them to improvesociety. Marshaling precise and detailed evidence that illuminates the meanings of progressivismto Tennessee's female activists, the essays in this valuable compendium connect Tennesseewomen to the larger movements for reform that dominated the early-twentieth-century Americanexperience.