Phoebe "Febb" King Ensminger Burn (1873–1945) was an American schoolteacher. She is credited with playing a crucial role in ensuring the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits denying the right to vote to citizens on the basis of sex, effectively recognizing women's right to vote. Through a letter she sent to her son, Tennessee State Representative Harry T. Burn, she influenced him to cast the deciding vote in favor of ratification in Tennessee, the final state needed to ratify the amendment.
Biography Burn was born in Mount Verd, Tennessee, in 1873. Little is known about her childhood, but she is known to have graduated the U.S. Grant Memorial University, now Tennessee Wesleyan University, during a time which news site The Persistent described as one in which "academia was a man's domain".
After college, she married James Lafayette Burn, a stationmaster, and worked as a teacher. She had four children, including Harry T. Burn. After her husband died, she took over managing the family farm in Niota, Tennessee, and was known to be the matriarch of the family. She encouraged her son Harry's interest in politics.
She was said to read three newspapers a day, and was passionate about equal rights, often speaking about the matter at home with her family, including Harry.
During the discussion of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which would grant suffrage to women, she encouraged her son to vote in favor of the amendment. However, he had settled against voting for it due to political pressures from his voters.
That year, she heard of a speech by his political mentor, State Senator Herschel M. Candler, that was vehemently racist and anti-suffrage, both things she disapproved of. Because of this, she decided to include a mention in her letter to her son reminding him to vote in favor of suffrage, saying "Hurrah and vote for suffrage and don’t keep them in doubt" and "Don't forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt". He kept the letter in his pocket on the date he cast the vote, and it is credited with flipping his vote, resulting in him casting the deciding vote in favor of suffrage becoming part of the constitution.
In her son's statement the following day, he cited her as a main reason for his deciding vote, saying: "I knew that a mother's advice is always safest to follow and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification". Burn subsequently reported that a woman visitor attempted to persuade her to say that the letter had been false; historian Marjorie Spruill Wheeler has stated that the woman, who Burn said had "claim[ed] to be [the] wife of [the] Governor of Louisiana", was probably Anne Ector Pleasant, who was known to have been in Tennessee at the time, and who was a known opponent of the Nineteenth Amendment because she felt that suffrage should be a state issue rather than a federal issue. Burn remained resolute, however, despite this lecturing and her neighbors' pity, stating in an interview: "I am glad he loved me enough to say afterwards my letter had that much influence on him... I don't need any sympathy. I am proud of my son. He has covered himself in glory."
She was the first woman to register to vote in her home county of McMinn County, Tennessee. She died in 1945.
Legacy The Burn Memorial in Knoxville, Tennessee, is a tribute to both her and her son Harry. Her letter is held in the archives of the Knox County Public Library. Her desk is in her county's history museum.
Her alma mater established the Febb Burn Society of Women Philanthropists in her honor.
Tennessee has named every August 18, the day of the vote, Febb Burn Day.
She is included in the Broadway musical Suffs, where she sings the song A Letter from Harry's Mother.
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