Tennessee and Progressivism - Research Paper Example

Democratize Government One of the main ways that the government was democratized in United s was giving American citizens the right to vote. One of the examples of reform in Tennessee during the progressive era was the Suffrage Movement which led to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment by the Tennessee General Assembly allowed women to vote (Kathleen 1984). This is a way of democratizing the government as a measure of reform because it hands over the power of the government to the hands of the people through voting.

The main issue raised by the Suffrage Movement was the right of women to vote. Although the idea received a lot of opposition and led to ridicule of Tennessee women, some of the women including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Antony persistently fought for the rights of women to vote. They used crusades for women’s rights to advocate for their voting rights. Elizabeth Meriwether and her sister-in-law Lide Meriwether led the suffrage movement in Memphis. Elizabeth published her own journal to promote women rights while Lide led the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and fought for Women rights for about seventeen years (Kathleen 1984).

With a lot of challenges including unpopularity and splitting of the suffrage group, the movement struggled to survive and maintain its ideas of reforms. The fight for women’s right to vote took place throughout the progressive era from late nineteenth century to early twentieth century (Kathleen 1984). The movement bore fruits in 1920 when the Tennessee National Assembly approved the Nineteenth Amendment which allowed millions of women to vote; hence placing the government on the hands of the people – democratizing the American society.

References listKathleen, C. Berkley, “Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, ‘An Advocate for her Sex’: Feminism and Conservatism in the Post-Civil War South,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly, 34 (1984): 390-407.