Breathing the Same Air

Abstract

Weil pushed a reluctant Federation of Women's Clubs to adopt a suffrage resolution. In 1914 she served as president of the Goldsboro Equal Suffrage League and five years later was elected president of the Equal Suffrage Association of North Carolina. Either North Carolina Tennessee would need to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment for women to achieve the vote, but North Carolina's political climate was conservative. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, appointed Weil as state field commander. The legislature repeatedly voted down granting women the franchise or legal rights, and anti-suffragists campaigned that women's suffrage was immoral and would overturn white supremacy. Although the governor reluctantly endorsed women's suffrage, the state legislature tabled the motion, and Tennessee became the ultimate ratifying state.