Sue Shelton White - Infinite Women

The following is republished with permission from WAPUSH Wednesday, part of the campaign to get a Women’s AP US History course in high schools. It was written by Serene Williams.

Born: 25 May 1887, United States
Died: 6 May 1943
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA

Suffragist, Lawyer, Leader of the National Woman’s Party in Tennessee

Sue Shelton White was a prominent Tennessee suffragist and longtime member of the National Woman’s Party. She was born in Henderson, Tennessee in 1887. White, who was also known as “Miss Sue,” was one of the first women court reporters in 1907.
White played a pivotal role in the final push for suffrage at the end of the 1910s, especially in 1919. She worked directly for Alice Paul as an editor of The Suffragist and was frequently featured in newspapers as a national leader of the party. In 1919, she was arrested for burning an effigy of President Woodrow Wilson outside the White House. At this protest she said, “We burn not the effigy of the President of a free people, but the leader of an autocratic party organization whose tyrannical power holds millions of women in political slavery.” It was also in 1919 that White took part in the “Prison Special” a traveling tour of NWP members who had been in prison fighting for the right to vote. White played an important role in the passage of the 19th Amendment in the state of Tennessee which was the 36th state to ratify, known as the “perfect 36th.” She was sent to Tennessee by Alice Paul who believed in her political ability to push through the amendment.
White was affiliated with the National Woman’s Party through the 1920s. In the summer of 1920, White was pictured picketing in front of the Republican National Convention in Chicago. In 1923, White helped Alice Paul draft the original version of the Equal Rights Amendment and she believed it was necessary to separate sex from politics. Throughout the 1920s, White spoke widely about the amendment and is documented advocating for the ERA as part of her work with the NWP as late as 1928. That year she worked with other NWP members to lobby the Republican Party to endorse the amendment. As a result of this election, White left the National Woman’s Party over their endorsement of Herbert Hoover, a Republican presidential candidate who did not support the ERA. In addition to her work contributing to the passage of the 19th Amendment and writing the ERA, White also played an important role in the creation of the Social Security Act as she worked as a lawyer within the Roosevelt administration to implement this legislation. White passed away in 1943.
In recent years, White’s political work has received an increased amount of attention as she was a central figure in Elaine Weiss’s widely read book The Woman’s Hour about the final push for suffrage. White was honored with a monument in Jackson, Tennessee in 2017 and her papers are held at the Schlesinger Library at Harvard.