28 suffrage activities become too radical, suffrage support could diminish significantly.

Such activities as distributing thousands of handbills at the 1910 Appalachian Exposition, participating in suffrage debates between Normal schools, or attending a

Suffrage Day baseball game represented forays into the public sphere. The activities, however, did not signal a permanent break with the private sphere. In fact, even during the fmal days ofthe ratification battle when suffragists lobbied more than ever before,

Catt noted that suffragists needed to use "very high-class behavior.,,22

Although Tennessean Sue Shelton White and other NWP members conducted militant activities, such as picketing in front of the White House and burning President

Wilson's speeches, that most southern suffragists refused to condone, Tennessee's

NAWSA-affiliated suffragists' participation in the May Day festivities represented involvement in semi-militant suffrage activity. The May Day parades and rallies, held between 1914 and 1916, enabled women to take control of public space. Through

Nashville's May Day celebrations, suffragists took over both the downtown streets and the grounds of Centennial Park, and in 1914, when Chattanooga women laid claim to the

Hamilton County Courthouse, they held the city's first ''public open-air demonstration ... in the interest of votes for women.,,23

22Wheeler, New Women, 72-75; Craft, "Knoxville Equal Suffrage League"; Memphis Commercial Appeal, 6 May 1914, 3; "Handbook of the Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association (Inc)," 51, Elizabeth Breen Papers, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, Folder 10; and to , 1 July 1920, Carrie Chapman Catt Papers, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, Box 1, Folder 6.

23Wheeler, New Women, 77 and 131; Nashville Tennessean, 14 May 1916; and Chattanooga Sunday Times, 3 May 1914.