Tennessee became the “Perfect 36” on August 18, 1920, when the state legislature voted to ratify the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing that the right of citizens of the United States to vote could not be denied or abridged on account of sex. After five days of repeated tied votes, the legislation passed by one vote cast by Sen. Harry Burn, who had received a letter from his mother urging him to vote for suffrage, and Gov. Albert H. Roberts signed the state’s ratification on August 24. The long struggle for women’s suffrage is traced across 172 years beginning with the organizers of the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, and continuing through later leaders such as Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul. In Tennessee, and especially in Johnson City, politically savvy and socially connected women made upper East Tennessee an integral part of the state’s decisive role in women’s enfranchisement. On October 7, 1916, Mary Eliza Shaut White, chair of the Tennessee branch of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage and a leader in the Johnson City Suffrage Club, led a Johnson City suffrage parade on horseback with participants from Knoxville and Jonesborough, decorated vehicles, and the fife and drum corps from Mountain Home, ending in a pro-suffrage rally and keynote address by Mary Nelson Williams Meriwether. The struggle for voting rights did not end with the 19th Amendment, which did not grant all women the right to vote, and later gains included the Snyder Act of 1924 for First Nations people, the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 for people of Asian descent, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 against voting restrictions on African Americans. Women of color, including Sojourner Truth and Tennesseans Frankie Pierce, Ida B. Wells, and Mary Church Terrell, are recognized for leading the way toward equality and voting rights, while later generations continued that legacy, including efforts connected to disability legislation passed by Congress in the 1970s.