BPW: Statues will honor Tennessee women

A set of statues in honor of women suffragettes will be unveiled this year in Jackson and Nashville to begin commemoration of the women's suffrage centennial.

The reveal dates were announced during the Business and Professional Women of Tennessee's Region III conference on Saturday. A statue of Sue Shelton White, of Jackson, will be made to keep in Jackson. Another statue featuring five women with roles in ratifying the 19th Amendment in Tennessee will be placed in Nashville near War Memorial Auditorium. White will be among the five on the statue in Nashville, as well as having her own statue in Jackson.

Jacque Hillman, a member of the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Monument Board and second vice president of Jackson's chapter of Business and Professional Women, said they hope to unveil a statue of Sue Shelton White in Jackson on Aug. 26. White was a member of Jackson's BPW, as well as working in a Jackson law practice and working with the Social Security Act.

The statue will be made by Jackson resident Wanda Stanfill, though no permanent location has been announced. A fundraiser has already brought in $2,500 to fund White's statue.

"This cannot wait until 2020 to celebrate and inform people. We've got to start positioning Tennessee for the momentum toward 2020," said Paula Casey, keynote speaker and president of the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Monument Board. "Tennessee has always been overlooked and overshadowed. It's up to Tennesseans to make people care about Tennessee."

Tennessee was the final vote to ratify the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote in 1920. Casey said the board hopes to be able to unveil the statue for the October meeting on Tennessee's Economic Council on Women and for the national delegates of Vision 2020. Vision 2020 is a program based in Philadelphia, Pa., promoting the anniversary of women's right to vote and social and economic equality for women by the centennial.

"This is an opportunity to see women, strong women, depicted who did something really significant," Casey said. "That's what public art is. It's going to be there after we're all gone, and the stories will be told by the plaques."

The five women on the statue will be Carrie Chapman Catt, of New York, who worked with legislators in Tennessee; Anne Dallas Dudley, a Nashville socialite and mother; Abby Crawford Milton, of Chattanooga; Frankie Pierce, of Nashville; and Sue Shelton White.

The statue will also show Tennessee Speaker of the House of Representatives Beth Harwell; Jane Eskind, the first woman to win a nomination from either major party for a political office; and Lois DeBerry, former member of the Tennessee House of Representatives and Speaker pro tempore, who died in 2013.

Casey said the statue is estimated to cost $900,000. Through fundraisers, TWSM has already raised roughly $150,000 to have the statue made. The colors of the suffrage movement will be part of the display as well in what Casey called "a suffrage garden" of irises, yellow roses and white flowers.

"We don't know what the country will be like 50 years from now, so what we have to do is make sure that we capture, record and preserve this history so that future generations will understand what happened in Tennessee," she said.

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