Sister reforms : an examination of the relationship between the Tennessee Women's Temperance Union and the State Woman's Suffrage Movement, 1890-1920

This study examines the activities of the Tennessee Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the state equal suffrage societies during the period 1890 to 1920, in an attempt to determine the relationship between these women's organizations and, in particular, the role played by the WTCU in the state women's suffrage movement. Temperance and suffrage organizations were chosen for the study because of their attraction to large numbers of women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and their similar commitment to progressive reform.

Primary sources of information for this study were national and state WTCU convention records, housed at the national WZTU library in Evanston, Illinois, the national WTCU newspaper, the Union Signal, similarly stored in Evanston, and manuscript collections at the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville, Tennessee and the Lawson McGhee Library in Knoxville, Tennessee. Histories of the state prohibition and suffrage movements and contemporary newspaper accounts furnished additional information.

The study and its findings reveal that a close association between the Tennessee WCTU and the state women's suffrage movement existed for much of the time period examined. During the nineteenth century, when public resistance to women's in projects outside the home was great, the WCTU was of extreme importance to the woman's movement. As a Christian organization devoted to the noble cause of temperance, the WCTU enjoyed a respectability and acceptance within the southern community few women's organizations could match. Under the guidance of progressive and far-sighted early leaders the WCTU's program of activities quickly expanded to encompass a wide range of progressive social and political reforms such as woman's suffrage. In this way, the white ribbon organization became the primary vehicle for the discussion and advancement of the controversial issue of woman's suffrage within the state as WTCU members began to fill the ranks and leadership positions of the newly-organized equal suffrage societies. During the twentieth century the relationship between the WTCU and equal suffrage societies relaxed somewhat, but the break was never complete. Interest and cooperation remained high between the two women's organizations, and the skills and experience gathered in the early temperance campaigns proved instrumental in the later battle for woman's suffrage.