Julian E. Endsley, 32°, K.C.C.H.
1299 Briarwood Drive, Apartment 319
San Luis Obispo, California 93401–5967

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution giving women the right to vote.

She was a widow who managed the family farm while raising her children. A woman capable of sound management, she made the work economically successful and kept the children in school until the last of them, Harry, finished college. During that period of years she had several farm employees, all male, all able to vote. When Harry got out of college, she had talks with him explaining her belief that it was morally wrong that she provided employment for men who could elect state and federal legislators to govern her life's work and activities while she had no say in these matters. Harry agreed with her.

In 1920, at age 24, Harry was Tennessee's youngest state legislator. In August of that same year, Albert H. Roberts, Governor of Tennessee, called the recessed State Legislature back into session. The special session was convened to vote on a single issue, the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, women's right to vote.

A year earlier, in 1919, both Houses of the United States Congress had approved the Amendment. It was then in the hands of the States, three-quarters of them required for passage. Nine states rejected it out of hand. Four more negative votes by States would kill it. Tennessee was one of the last four. Of the three others, two had, like Tennessee, already recessed, and the Governors of those states, Vermont and Connecticut, refused to call special legislative sessions. The third, Delaware, abstained from voting. Tennessee alone held the fate of the proposed Amendment in its hands.

Governor Roberts, singularly holding the power to recall, had convened the special session, and he voted for the Amendment. The legislators, some grudgingly, began casting their ballots on the seniority basis. When all members of the State Legislature except one had voted, the Amendment needed one more vote for passage. One man held the balance.

Young Harry Thomas Burn, a 24-year-old bachelor and the junior member of the Legislature, stood up and cast his ballot—for the Amendment. He changed history and the course of Western governments for all time. His mother could vote in subsequent elections. The U.S. Congress proclaimed the Amendment on August 26, 1920.

This year, the 80th anniversary of the Amendment, American women everywhere may remember with gratitude two Masons in particular, Albert H. Roberts and Harry Thomas Burn, whose dedication for a worthy cause induced them to step boldly against the tide of history and give women their first-ever right to vote.

Albert H. Roberts was a member of Livingston Lodge No. 259, Livingston, Tennessee. He died in 1946. Harry Thomas Burn was a member of Meridian Sun Lodge No. 50, Athens, Tennessee. He died in 1977. Thank you, Brothers, for teaching us once again that our fate is in our hands!

Julian E. Endsley is a Past Master and Past Wise Master, both at Santa Barbara, Calif. He directed the Chapter Degrees for 12 years, was Chairman of the Scottish Rite's Tri-Counties Speakers Bureau, Chairman of the Scottish Rite Library Committee, and Cochairman of the Tri-Counties Bicentennial Commission. After service in the Army Medical Corps, he studied engineering, was president of the Engineers' Club of Santa Barbara, and retired in 1991. He is well known as a cast member of the play "A Rose upon the Altar" which has attracted many new Masons and Scottish Rite members to the Fraternity. He had the honor of raising Ill. Burl Ives as a Master Mason in 1976.