Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 23, 1995                   TAG: 9508230080
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MICHELLE WILLIAMS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NIOTA, TENN.                                LENGTH: Medium

SECRET OF HIS HISTORIC, CRUCIAL VOTE: MOTHER'S ADVICE

His name was Harry Thomas Burn, and his single ballot - cast on a hot August morning in 1920, at a special session of the Tennessee Legislature - gave millions of women the right to vote.

Congress had passed the 19th Amendment a year earlier; by June, 35 of the 36 states needed for ratification had approved it. The issue was dead in nine states; four were undecided: Tennessee, Delaware, Vermont and Connecticut.

Vermont and Connecticut refused to call special legislative sessions. Delaware chose not to take any action.

That left Tennessee. At the urging of President Woodrow Wilson, Gov. Albert Roberts agreed to call a special session.

As the speaker rapped for order, hundreds of women with big floppy hats and floor-length skirts nervously fanned themselves in the nearly 100-degree heat. Some anxiously waited in the corridors; others crowded the chambers.

Suffrage supporters wore yellow roses; opponents, red.

Supporters hurried one legislator, a doctor, back from California to cast his vote. R.L. Dowlen, recovering from an operation, was carried to the chamber. T.A. Dodson, on his way to see his sick child, was promised a special train if he would remain for the vote, which he did.

But it was a letter from Febb King Ensminger Burn, mother of the state's youngest legislator, that made the difference. In it, she referred to suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt.

``Dear Son, Hurrah and vote for suffrage! Don't keep them in doubt. I notice some of the speeches against. They were bitter. I have been watching you to see how you stood, but have not noticed anything yet. Don't forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put rat in ratification.''

A motion had been made a day earlier to table the resolution until January. The vote ended 48-48, with Burn voting to put the matter off until after November, when he was expected to win re-election.

Speaker Seth Walker called for a second vote after both sides cried miscount. It, too, was 48-48.

Since the effort to postpone the vote failed, Tennessee had no choice but to vote on the amendment itself. A tie vote would defeat the amendment. One vote change could defeat or give women the right to vote.

Burn was cautious. He believed women should have voting rights, but his constituents back home in the East Tennessee community of Mouse Creek, now Niota, were divided on the issue. He also had a race to run.

``I voted to table the amendment, not in opposition but in hopes that it would come up again at the next sessions after election day,'' Burn said in a 1970 interview with Look magazine. He died in 1977.

Burn said his mother, a well-read, educated widow, was appalled that her illiterate farmhands could vote on matters concerning her land, but she could not - simply because she was a woman.

A hush fell over the chamber as the clerk began the roll call vote. When the clerk reached the third row to the right of the rostrum, Burn said, ``Aye.''

There was a dead silence followed by an explosion of cheers and jeers, applause and hisses. Women hugged, cried, laughed and threw roses in the air.

Burn was accused of taking bribes and some anti-suffragists even visited his mother, urging her to deny writing the letter. She wired the suffrage headquarters that her letter was authentic.

In a statement Burns sent to be on the House floor a day later, he said he changed his mind because he was morally and legally obligated.

``I knew that a mother's advice is always safest for her boy to follow. I appreciated the fact that an opportunity such as this seldom comes to a mortal man to free ... women from political slavery was mine,'' he wrote.

On Aug. 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution became law. Three months later, for the first time in history, women from every state could vote in the presidential election.

And that November, voters in Mouse Creek sent Burn back for another term.