Empowering Voices: Anne Dallas Dudley Tennessee Society by SANDI ATKINSON, Former National Membership Committee Chair
I have never yet met a man or woman who denied that taxation without representation is tyranny. I have never yet seen one who was such a traitor to our form of government that he did not believe that the government rests upon the consent of the governed. This is a government of, for, and by the people, and only the law denies that women are people. - Anne Dallas Dudley
A
nne Dallas Dudley (Mrs. Guilford) was a Tennessee Dame active in civic affairs. She was born Annie Willis Dallas in Nashville to a distinguished family. Her great-uncle, George M. Dallas, served as Vice President of the United States under James K. Polk. A few years after her marriage, she became involved in the temperance movement as a supporter of alcohol prohibition. Through her work in the temperance movement, she became convinced that a woman’s place in society could only be improved if women were allowed to vote. In September 1911 she and several of her friends met in the back parlor of the Tulane Hotel and founded the Nashville Equal Suffrage League, an organization dedicated to building local support for women’s suffrage while “quietly and earnestly avoiding militant methods.” With her as president, the league organized and led giant May Day suffrage parades. Even her children participated. She helped bring the National Suffrage Convention to Nashville 1914 and is noted for her successful efforts to get the 19th Amendment ratified in Tennessee, the final state necessary to bring the amendment into force.
Women campaigning for equal voting rights in Chattanooga in 1912 Photo credit: Tennessee Encyclopedia 16
Dames Discovery | Fall 2020
Women’s suffrage ratification in the Tennessee Senate chamber Photo credit: Nashville Tennessean
