FEATURE
REMEMBERING
Anne Dallas Dudley
I
BY MICHELE O’BRIEN • MIDDLE SCHOOL SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHER PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE TENNESSEE STATE LIBRARY & ARCHIVES
n May of 1886, Dr. W. E. Ward addressed the audience of the twenty-first commencement ceremony at Ward Seminary for Young Ladies with a message not terribly distant from that delivered on Souby Lawn each May. In his The Coming Woman address, Ward implored graduates to embrace the opportunities of a rapidly advancing and complex world without losing reverence for tradition. They were to confidently explore their world with curiosity, communicate articulately, honor their families, and appreciate the wisdom of certain traditions. In words wholly unfamiliar to today’s Harpeth Hall students, Dr. Ward then cautioned that the modern woman ought to prioritize motherhood and avoid “the political arena, where the rougher man contends, quarrels, and fights. She ought not,” he continued, “to want the ballot.” Dr. Ward died the following year, so he would have no idea that his school educated many of the confident and articulate women who contended, quarreled, and fought to win that ballot years later. Notable among those burgeoning suffragists, and enrolled in Ward Seminary in 1886, was Annie Dallas. Miss Dallas was, as were her mother, aunts, and two sisters, trained by Dr. Ward and his teachers to be confident, articulate, and well-mannered women who could handle public scrutiny and social pressure. Whether as a debutante navigating the many social events of Nashville’s elite or as the wife of Mr. Guilford Dudley volunteering for civic improvement efforts, Anne Dallas Dudley proved to have mastered those lessons. She was a charter member of the Centennial Club of Nashville and was selected to serve as chairwoman of the Kindergarten Project in the West End. She was also one of nine women who met at the Tulane Hotel, on the corner of Church and 8th Street, in September of 1911 to found the Nashville Equal Suffrage League (NESL). Anne Dudley served as its President for four years and played a central role in its public speeches, social events, and parades. In May of 1914, she helped to organize an event that would propel her into the
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HALLWAYS
national spotlight. The Tennessean boasted “Today is Suffrage Day” and Nashville was “dressed in its best bib and tucker for the occasion.” And what an occasion it was. A line of fifty festively decorated cars rumbled from the downtown headquarters of the NESL to Centennial Park with men, women, and children riding along to wave at spectators. Mrs. Guilford Dudley and her family were first in line followed closely by her fellow suffragists and friends Catherine Talty Kenny and Maria Thompson Daviess. All three women would speak on the steps of the Parthenon that day, but Dudley was the first in what was the first open-air speech given by a woman in the south. Flanked by her children and supported by her husband, she argued that women held a moral duty as care-takers to support the public efforts of husbands and the health and growth of children. “[T]he affairs of the government are, after all,” she noted, “the affairs of the home.” Thus, she argued, the federal amendment for suffrage honored and protected the natural duties of
Anne Dallas Dudley on the steps of The Parthenon, 1915
