103 Years After Famous March, Nashville Street Named For Women's Suffrage Leader

NASHVILLE, TN — Downtown's Capitol Boulevard was official renamed for women's suffrage pioneer Anne Dallas Dudley with a unanimous vote of the Metro Council late Tuesday.

Councilmember Freddie O'Connell filed the ordinance to rename the street which runs from the downtown public library to the grounds of the State Capitol for Dudley, a member of a prominent Tennessee family who led the charge for Tennessee's ratification of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote, which passed the legislature by a single vote in 1920.

(For more updates on this story and free news alerts for your neighborhood, sign up for your local Middle Tennessee Patch morning newsletter.)

Dudley was known for leading a famous march from the Capitol — down Capitol Boulevard, in fact — to Centennial Park May 2, 1914 — coincidentally, 103 years to the day before the council vote. Councilmembers were all presented with yellow roses, the symbol of the pro-suffrage movement — anti-sufferagists wore red roses, prompting the obvious "War of the Roses" appellation.

Once at the park, Dudley spoke to 2,000 people, at the time the largest number of Tennesseans who had gathered for a speech by a woman. Dudley, Carrie Chapman Catt, Abby Crawford Milton, Juno Frankie Pierce and Sue Shelton White are commemorated with a statue in Centennial Park unveiled in August. Dudley is also depicted in Tennessee's Women's Suffrage Monument in Knoxville with Lizzie Crozier French and Elizabeth Avery Meriwether and is included with other prominent Tennesseans in the state's bicentennial mural. She is a member of the National Women's Hall of Fame.

Local historian David Ewing, who began the push for the street renaming in 2014, told The Tennessean that Dudley is among "the greatest Tennesseans of all times."

“Because of the work of Anne Dallas Dudley in this city, 27 million women got the right to vote," he told the newspaper.

Dudley was the matriarch of one of the city's most prominent families. Her great-uncle, George M. Dallas, was James K. Polk's vice-president. Her son, Guilford Dudley Jr., served as ambassador to Denmark, and his grandson Chris Dudley was a journeyman NBA center and Republican nominee for governor of Oregon in 2010.

Image via Library of Congress