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Historical Society celebrating Women’s history Month

Coming off the heels of a successful Black History exhibit, Coffee County Historical Society Museum volunteer Sandra McMullin Bennett said she knew she wanted to curate an exhibit to honor women from throughout Tennessee for Women’s History Month.

Celebrated every March, Women’s History Month was first observed in 1987, setting aside a time to remember the achievements that women have made throughout the history of the United States.

“When I was in Nashville and I started learning all this history about women one of the things I found really disturbing was the fact there was nothing being talked about and this changed everything,” Bennett said of the women’s suffrage movement.

“Women winning the right to vote changed everything and women really do contribute so much that is just pushed aside and I have a real problem with that,” she added.

Located at the Coffee County Historical Society Museum at the old Coffee County Courthouse on the town square, the exhibit, which is open 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday through the middle of April.

The exhibit highlights the achievements of several women from both Manchester and Coffee County. These include Betty Sain, who became the first woman to win the Walking Horse World Grand Championship in 1966 as well as Women’s Basketball Hall of Famer Alline Banks Sprouse.

Dressed in a suffragette costume, Bennett welcomed visitors to the Historical Society Saturday March 9 for a presentation regarding the exhibit and Women’s History Month.

“The month of March now marks National Women’s History Month, a time for us to recognize the many contributions that women have made in the United States,” Bennett said. “While we tend to use this month to focus on women who were recognized nationally as public figures such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart and Rosa Parks, there are women from every state of the union who have made great contributions with little or no fanfare or acknowledgement of their work.”

Bennett said Tennessee played a pivotal role in the passage of the 19th Amendment, officially becoming the 36th and final state needed to ratify the amendment Aug. 18 1920.

“A lot of people don’t know that and that is my mission, to get the word out,” she said.

Bennett said the right to vote did not come easy to women in this country, with the first women’s rights convention coming in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York. Attended by more than 300 women and men (who were allowed to attend on the second day of the two-day convention) the call for women’s suffrage was officially sounded.

“It took our mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers another 72 years of sacrifice and hard work to give us the right to vote,” she said.

While the U.S. Congress officially passed the 19th Amendment to the Constitution on June 4, 1919, 36 of the then 48 states were needed to ratify it, making it the law of the land.

“By the summer of 1920, 35 states had ratified, 8 had rejected it and with no other state even close to ratifying, the pro-suffrage forces looked to Tennessee,” Bennett said.

In addition to major cities like Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville and Chattanooga, suffrage leagues were spread throughout Tennessee.

“Right here in Middle Tennessee there were equal Suffrage leagues in Winchester, McMinnville, Bell Buckle, Cookeville and here in Coffee County there were equal suffrage leagues in Manchester, Hickerson Station and Tullahoma,” Bennett said.

“These women gave speeches, held parades and they knocked on the doors of their neighbors and they traveled out into the countryside to find support for suffrage,” she added.

Bennett said Tennesseans should be proud of the role their state played in giving women throughout the nation the right to vote.

“Having an exhibit for women’s history month is so important,” she said. “It is an opportunity to remember the ladies, the pioneer women who helped settle our state, the women who gave us the right to vote and all the women who became more than our ancestors had ever dreamed possible.”

Bennett said she would like to encourage area residents to bring their children and grandchildren to the museum to see the exhibit and learn the stories of the women featured in it.

Ultimately, she said she would love to see a national women’s history center join the host of museums in Washington D.C. to better document women’s history and the women’s suffrage movement.

“Think about taking your daughter or your granddaughter to one of these museums and seeing what these women did and the circumstances under which they did them and what an impact that might have on them in encouraging them to move forward,” Bennett said.