NAWSA     GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE   Pinckard, Mrs. James S.

We Serve that our State may Live; and Living, Preserve the Union

The Southern Women's League for the Rejection of the
Susan B. Anthony Amendment

ALABAMA DIVISION HEADQUARTERS
1517 Madison Avenue

Legal Adviser
JUDGE JOHN B. TYSON
Ex-Chief Justice of Supreme
Court of Alabama

MONTGOMERY, ALA.
NASHVILLE, Tenn., July 23, 1920

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt
Hermitage Hotel, Nashville.

My dear Mrs. Catt:

     Southern women abhor political combat for their sex.
That is one of the reasons they deeply oppose the campaign
of your organization to plunge women into perpetual political
turmoil.

     We have no desire to make your campaign unpleasant,
but we must insist at any cost that it be honest.

     You are quoted in a morning newspaper as saying:
     "There is nothing in the past quarter of a century
      that would be so indicative of the traditions of the
      old South as would the ratification of this amendment."

     In view of this remarkable statement, I must ask you
what your association meant when it passed a formal
resolution, printed in the Crisis, official Negro organ,
November, 1917, page 12, five months after that paper had
indorsed the intermarriage of races; as follows:

     "That all American men or women, white or black, shall
share equally in the privileges of democracy."

     Again, what did you mean when in a signed article in
the same issue of that official organ, you wrote:
     "Suffrage democracy knows no bias of race, color,
      creed or sex?"

     Again, what did you mean when in a formal address
before a convention of your association at Washington,
December 5, 1913, you declared:
     "Our cause can wait no[t] longer.  If the Constitution
      stands in our way, I say let us tear it into shreds
      and make a new one.  We must train our guns on the
      South."

     Once more, when you wrote a letter to Senator Poindexter,
congratulating him on the introduction of a

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Force Bill to rob the South of its representation in Congress,
were you under the impression that such a measure would be
"indicative of the traditions of the old South"?

     In Tennessee, as you know, ratification cannot be accomplished
without the violation of a solemn oath of office by every
legislator who votes for your amendment.  Even Northern newspapers
that make no pretense of "elevating the morals of politics,"
such as the New York Journal of Commerce, strongly condemn this
Tennessee proposition as a matter of plain perjury.

     Do you dare intimate, however indirectly, that the commission
of perjury by public officers is "indicative of the traditions
of the old South"?

     We intend to be as courteous to you as possible in any political
campaign, but we must demand that the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth be stated in this matter of life or
death to our beloved Southland.

Very truly yours,

Mrs. James S. Pinckard President

Southern Women's League for the
Rejection of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment

Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.