“The women know what they want and they know how to get it”

In “The women know what they want and they know how to get it,” Ingrid Peters, Deputy Director of the Newport Historical Society, delves into the lives of some of the women listed in the Newport Women 1919 Voter Registration Book. Tuesday, July 1, 1919 marked the first day that women could register to vote in the presidential election of 1920; by October 1920, 77,836 women were registered to vote in Rhode Island. The Newport Women 1919 Voter Registration Book in the collections of the Newport Historical Society reveals not only the names of Newport\u27s first women voters, but also shows that African-American women, some active in the pro-woman suffrage Newport Woman’s League, part of the Colored Women’s Clubs movement in the state, turned out to register to vote in Newport during the period leading up to the 1920 November election