Banks P. Turner

Turner's vote came with a sentence of its own. When Tennessee's House took up ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in August 1920, he was a professed opponent. Yet on the motion to table, rather than a plain nay, he said, "I wish to be recorded as against the motion to table." One account attributes the switch to pressure from the Democratic governors of Tennessee and Ohio, and probably from Woodrow Wilson, who saw the amendment as good for the party. Harry Burn is the better-remembered of the two members who changed sides.

What the plaque says

Banks P. Turner 1889-1953 A native of Neboville, Banks P. Turner graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1910 and was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1918. During the ratification debate on the 19th Amendment in August 1920, he surprised everyone by twice opposing a motion to kill the ratification resolution and then supporting the resolution on the final vote. Because the resolution passed by the razor-thin margin of 49 to 47, Turner's decisive action was critical to Tennessee's historic role as the 36th and final state to ratify the 19th Amendment enfranchising 27 million American women. Turner is buried in the Yorkville Cemetery.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Davy Crockett Cabin — 7.8 mi
  A restored cabin and museum in Rutherford for the last Tennessee home of David Crockett, who broke with Andrew Jackson over Indian removal.
• Big Cypress Tree State Park — 15 mi
  A small floodplain park on the Middle Fork of the Obion River, named for a bald cypress that stood 175 feet tall before lightning destroyed it in 1976.
• Mt. Zion CME Church — 23 mi
  Union City's 1896 brick church built by its Black congregation, the oldest surviving example of African American craftsmanship in town, listed on the National Register.
• Discovery Park of America — 24 mi
  A large museum and 50-acre heritage park in Union City, built on the old Obion County Museum, with Native American, earthquake and regional history galleries.

More markers nearby

• Otho French Strahl — 8.7 mi
• WW II Mid-Air Collision — 12 mi
• Bruce High School — 15 mi
• Coxville Church and Cemetery Winfield Scott (Scotty) Moore — 20 mi