KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — A restored 1914 “suffrage car” arrived in Knoxville Tuesday morning as part of a tour supporting the National Equal Rights Amendment during Women’s History Month.
In 1916, two suffragists drove 10,700 miles across the country in a Saxon Roadster to campaign for the 19th Amendment which had stalled. On Tuesday morning, a car of the same make and model arrived at the Women’s Suffrage Museum in Knoxville as part of a campaign for the National Equal Rights Amendment.
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“[The car] is now on tour, a replica tour, if you will, in support of the Equal Rights Amendment, which is the unfinished business of the suffragists,” said Wanda Sobieski, president of the Suffrage Coalition of which the museum is a project. “We do not yet have full constitutional guarantees of equality for women, and that has stalled.”
The Equal Rights Amendment would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex. It passed a two-thirds majority in Congress and was ratified by three fourths of the states, and President Joe Biden declared in to be law. However, the archivist of the United States said that the amendment can’t be certified because the states didn’t ratify it until 40 years after the deadline…