Kathleen M. McIntyre, Votes for 'Race' Women: The Rhode Island Union of Colored Women's Clubs and the Federal Woman Suffrage Amendment

Votes for 'Race' Women: The Rhode Island Union of Colored Women's Clubs and the Federal Woman Suffrage Amendment

By Kathleen M. McIntyre, Assistant Professor, Gender and Women's Studies, University of Rhode Island

In 1916, twenty-four African American women in Providence, Rhode Island, gathered at the Congdon Street Baptist Church. They signed a petition in favor of a federal woman suffrage amendment. This was a cause they had worked on since 1913 when members of the Rhode Island Union of Colored Clubs drafted a resolution at their annual conference. The women ranged from teenagers to senior citizens. Some were born in Rhode Island, but many hailed from South Carolina, Maryland, and even Canada. They shared a commitment to improving the lives of girls and women in Rhode Island and the nation. Their petition represents a group of Black club women united through religious faith, cultural movements, the legacy of slavery in the United States, advocacy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and social work. While of different educational levels, professional backgrounds, and economic classes, the club women viewed suffrage as an important avenue to girls' and women's uplift, a key tenet of the Black women's club movement.

Providence, Rhode Island, was a promising hub of employment opportunities and racial justice activism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Blacks migrating from the Jim Crow South found jobs cooking and cleaning in white homes or fancy hotels, loading on the docks, making jewelry, working as porters in hotels and teamsters at meatpacking plants, or employed in the garment industry and cigarmaking. Yet most of these opportunities were limited to unskilled, manual labor. Black scholars and activists frequently noted that it was very difficult to get an office position in Providence, even if one possessed the educational and skill level required. For example, in 1887, The New York Age lamented the labor inequality Black adults faced due to the continued prejudice of white people.[1] This discrimination meant that even educated Black Providence residents were relegated to manual labor. The article noted that there only appeared to be one Black employee working as a clerk for the city although there were many other qualified Blacks to fill positions that always went to white people. "A Negro has all the advantages to secure a fine education that money can buy in Rhode Island, but he cannot after securing an education make the best use of it [unless] he goes to another city than this. The Caucasian inhabitants of this city harbor a contemptible prejudice."[2] Despite Rhode Island's reputation as a beacon of religious and racial freedom, the state's wealth as a colony and as a state came initially from the rum segment of the triangular slave trade. Only in 2020 did Rhode Island voters successfully change the state's name from "State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations" to "State of Rhode Island."[3]

The legacy of slavery shaped the lives of the Rhode Island club women in profound ways. While Rhode Island ostensibly promised gradual manumission to slaves beginning in 1784 (through the efforts of Quaker abolitionists like Moses Brown), it really remained unenforceable until it was listed in the state constitution in 1843.[4] Many of the maiden names of the petition signers related back to Rhode Island slave holding families, including Bowen, Brown, and Herreshoff. Some of these women's families, including Rose Bell Talliafero Bradic, continued to work on the estates of their former owners. As a result of the African diaspora, signers also had family from the Caribbean and the U.S. South.

The end of Reconstruction in 1876 and the start of Jim Crow discrimination in the South led many Black southerners to seek better economic and social opportunities in the North. The Great Migration of Blacks to the North accelerated during World War I. Yet many cities had been experiencing Black migration from the South for decades.[5] Providence suffragist petition signers Mary E. Jackson and Rose B. Bradic were immersed in the issue. Jackson and Bradic represented Providence at the 1916-1917 Negro Migration Conference in New York City.[6] Like churches, Black fraternities and women's clubs offered new arrivals mutual aid assistance for rent expenses, employment prospects, and later burial costs.[7] Club participation also brought migrants a shared sense of community.

The social center of Providence's Black life was the Congdon Street Baptist Church in the historic College Hill neighborhood. The congregation dates to 1819 when Moses Brown, whose family founded Brown University and were once Rhode Island's wealthiest slave owners, donated the land to "the people of color."[8] The original 1821 church structure was torn down by white neighbors in 1869 who disliked having a Black congregation near their homes and businesses. Baptists met at other locations before their church was rebuilt at its current 17 Congdon Street address in 1874.[9]

Most of the signers of the 1916 petition rented apartments within a four-block radius of the church, although some of the blue-collar and middle-class members bought houses in neighboring Pawtucket, whereas the wealthier and more established signers owned in College Hill. It was also in this College Hill neighborhood where professional opera singer Matilda Sissieretta Jones (known professionally as Black Patti) grew up and sang at Congdon Street Church, including suffrage fundraisers.[10] As a child in the 1870s, Jones attended nearby Meeting Street School. Providence city schools desegregated in the 1860s, but many Black children still attended the Quaker primary school on Meeting Street. Regardless of where they lived or if they were Baptist or African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) or Episcopalian, most Providence Blacks held their social and cultural events and certainly meetings of women's clubs at Congdon Street.[11]

Rhode Island club members celebrated and promoted African and African American history, literature, and culture. Throughout the early 1910s, the signers of the 1916 suffrage declaration performed in recitals, organized temperance talks, ran sewing groups, promoted books by Black authors, invited NAACP speakers, and attended the New Century Club and the 20th Century Art and Literature Club. Established in 1902, the Rhode Island Union of Colored Women's Club was a way of bringing together housewives, cooks, cleaners, teachers, dressmakers, and choir directors to focus on many pressing contemporary issues. The Club held annual conferences in Rhode Island cities such as Providence, Newport, and Pawtucket, usually at a Baptist church.[12] The Rhode Island Union of Colored Women's Clubs used churches, particularly Baptist congregations, as important mobilizing structures in their path towards suffrage. Yet suffrage was just one issue they were fighting for.

Historian Earline Ferguson notes that while "municipal housekeeping" became a popular form of white women's charity work, Black women had long worked outside the home and didn't experience the "domestic void" that middle and upper white women might have encountered in the Progressive Era.[13] Black suffragist and scholar Fannie Barrier Williams laid out the double burden of racism and sexism in her groundbreaking 1900 essay on the Black women's club movement: "Among colored women... the club is only one of many means for the social uplift of a race. Among white women the club is the onward movement of the already uplifted."[14] Black women did not see clubs as a leisurely activity or a way to get out of the domestic sphere: it was an important avenue in helping Blacks who remained socially, politically, and economically marginalized in the United States. In other words, Black women had a deep and multi-layered drive to effect change following their National Association of Colored Women's Club motto, "Lifting as We Climb."[15]

Black women's clubs in Rhode Island were especially concerned with young women who ended up in the juvenile court system--finding them jobs and helping them care for newborns became a pressing concern. One such club chapter, founded in 1902, The Women's New Century Club, led by petition signer Daisy D. Hart, frequently sent out calls for clothing donations and fundraising events for these young women.[16] In 1908, Hart arranged a fundraiser to furnish a home for working women on Bates Street in Providence. She was assisted by co-signer Eugenia.V. Heathman. "Frequent mention," reported The Providence Journal, "has been made of this praiseworthy charity."[17]

In addition, women's clubs pushed industrial education, in the model of Booker T. Washington, as a key aspect of racial uplift for working-class men and women. Founded in 1908 by Reverend William Holland, the minister of Providence's Ebenezer Baptist Church, the Watchman Industrial School sought to provide at-risk youth with job training so they could avoid the criminal justice system and make a decent wage. Women's club members celebrated student graduations and even enrolled in classes as adults at Watchman. For example, petition signer Lucy Proffitt Johnson earned her certificate at the age of 29 in 1914.[18]

World War I impacted African American families in Rhode Island in important ways. Many Black men enlisted, viewing the military as an avenue for financial and social mobility. Black newspapers aimed at professional middle-class audiences pushed the military and even mocked young men who did not join as lazy or lacking ambition. Black-owned newspapers, such as the New York Age, also celebrated the role of Black women in signing up to be secretaries at training camps and overseas.[19] Military training and pension opportunities did increase the wealth for the families who signed. The majority of the signers had husbands and sons who joined the military, setting them up for later careers in civil service and decent pensions. However, Black Americans still faced discrimination and segregation in the military. Military draft cards provide deep insight into the fluidity of race in the United States. Signer Lucy Proffitt Johnson's husband and sons are interchangeably described as Native American, Black or mulatto. In addition, many signers and their families later struggled to fully receive their loved ones' pensions. In the case of Victorine Spears and her sister and newspaper editor Charlotta Bass, we also see the close relationship between government surveillance of Black activists and military pension inheritance paperwork.[20]

Black women in Providence showed patriotic support for the war in their clubs. Employment opportunities opened up for them as factories needed female employees to keep up with increased wartime production needs and labor shortages. Yet these opportunities also intersected with racism. In November 1918, the owners of Gorham Manufacturing Company in Providence refused to employ "race women" because white girls would not work alongside them at the silver goods-producing plant. The author who described this incident noted that it happened in Providence not in Mississippi.[21] Gorham did considerable business for the U.S. military--supplying hand grenades and even decking out the U.S.S. Rhode Island battleship with a fancy silver tea service.[22] Republican Governor Robert Beekman promised to investigate the ban as did the local Women's Council of National Defense.

Black Rhode Islanders overwhelmingly supported the Republican Party before 1930. From 1870 when Black men in Rhode Island first voted to the late 1920s, Black suffrage groups promoted Republican candidates as it was the party of Lincoln and later, women's suffrage. R.I. Union of Club members made great efforts to maintain good relations with Republican officials. In the 1890s through the 1920s, at many club celebration events, former or present politicians or their wives were invited. In 1909, Mary E. Jackson received special recognition from former Republican Governor George Utter at an event of the Sunshine Club, an organization she also presided over.[23] Moreover, Bertha G. Higgins, not a signer on this petition but a staunch supporter of the Republican Party, received personal correspondence from President Warren Harding thanking her and other members of the Julia Ward Howe Republican Women's Club for canvassing for his ticket. The Club also received warm messages from Rhode Island Republican Congressman Clark Burdick for members' support of his campaign.[24] Thanks to the economic and social opportunities of the New Deal, many Black Rhode Island families began voting for the Democratic Party by the 1930s.

Support of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) complemented Black women's suffrage goals. Rhode Island Union of Colored Women's Club President Mary E. Jackson helped found the Providence NAACP chapter as did Eugenia V. Heathman's husband, lawyer William Heathman. Suffragist Roberta J. Dunbar served as the NAACP's secretary. The NAACP encouraged subscriptions to Black-owned local papers, including the Providence Advance, organized protests against the 1916 screening of the racist film, The Birth of a Nation, in Pawtucket, and reported on national movements against lynching.[25] Black activists Mary Church Terrell and Ida B. Wells worked closely with Jackson and other Rhode Island club women, including signers Jacintha Brown and Daisy D. Hart, on anti-lynching awareness.[26] In fact, Rhode Island club women hosted Mrs. Belle Caso LaFollette, wife of Wisconsin Republican Senator Robert LaFollette, a strong supporter of anti-lynching legislation. In 1914, Mrs. LaFollette gave the keynote address at the First Baptist Church of Providence. Mary E. Jackson also gave a speech at this event on "The Work of the Colored Women of Rhode Island."[27]

Mary E. Jackson was especially concerned with industrial work for women, and this commitment shaped the activities club women hosted. As a national secretary for the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), Jackson visited sites where Black women and girls labored in the war effort, from knitting, to ammunition to uniform production. Jackson praised the patriotism and bravery of all women to step out of the confines of domestic work and serve the nation. Yet as a YWCA representative, she was also concerned about treatment of Black women and tried to encourage employers to treat Black employees better. She also praised white employers who hired Black women and provided them safe and comfortable living conditions.[28] In late November 1918, NAACP field secretary and poet James Weldon Johnson wrote an editorial about Black employment uncertainties now that World War I was over. While Black men and women participated in the war effort on all fronts, they were now in a precarious labor situation. He cited Jackson's expertise on Black women's industrial work.[29] Jackson feared that since Black women and girls were filling positions previously held by white women, "who were called to more preferable and better paid employment on account of the war. These white women have not left the country, nor have they been killed in battle; and now that the war is over and thousands of the dressy jobs of war workers and clerks and stenographers will soon be abolished, it is certain that these women will again seek their former jobs."[30]

The 1916 suffrage petition was the culmination of several club conferences and organizing with white suffragists. In 1913, special presentations and joint lectures had been given by white suffragist Sara Algeo with club President Mary E. Jackson and member Bertha Higgins. The title of the lecture was "Why the Rhode Island Union Should Endorse the Suffrage Movement." By the end of the 1913 conference, Club women voted in favor of supporting suffrage. Mary E. Jackson, the President of the club, had been a long-time suffrage advocate. She gave "Votes for Women" speeches across New England, including in Norwich, Connecticut in January 1914 at a Baptist Conference and February at an AME Zion Church.[31] Jackson described how adult women were treated no differently than children, the mentally ill, and criminals when being disenfranchised. An article in New York Age described the "splendid turnout" in February, which "took kindly to her ringing words" on suffrage as well as a subsequent address exploring the tenets of Christian Womanhood.[32]

Temperance went hand in hand with suffrage and religious activism. Daisy D. Hart and Roberta Dunbar participated actively in regional temperance clubs, supporting the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. In one report to the Federation of Women's Clubs, Dunbar ridiculed working men marching in patriotic parades while later spending their money in bars.[33] At the 12th annual conference of R.I. Colored Women's Clubs at the Mount Zion AME Church in Newport, Rhode Island in 1915, Madelyn Lysbey and other teenagers spoke about the dangers of alcoholism.[34] These young women were among the 24 club women who went on to support the suffrage petition in 1916.

In October 1916, the 13th Annual Conference of the Rhode Island Union of Colored Women's Clubs took place at the Congdon St. Baptist Church. President Mary E. Jackson and General Secretary Jacinthia Brown were the first two signers supporting an amendment for women's suffrage. Jackson and Brown had worked with the Rhode Island Woman Suffrage Party (RIWSP) which had good relations with Black women's clubs.[35] In her 1925 memoir, white suffragist Sara Algeo declared, "[T]here should be no stock-taking account of suffrage progress in Rhode Island in 1913 without mention of the honorable part played by the colored women."[36] While many Black women's contributions have been erased from the national narratives written by Susan B. Anthony or Carrie Chapman Catt, Rhode Island accounts such as Algeo's, while just one example, do point to the efforts of Black and white women's organizations to work together.

Rhode Island secured women's state suffrage in 1917 and in January 1920 approved the federal suffrage amendment. The Rhode Island Union of Colored Women's Clubs continued to advocate for Black women and girls well into the 1950s. Black activists like Bertha Higgins founded the Julia Howe Republican Club, the sister organization to the Frederick Douglass Republican men's club. Roberta J. Dunbar founded the Providence branch of the League of Women Voters.[37] In the fall of 1920, Rose Bradic and Bertha Higgins attended the Republican state convention and organized League of Women Voters' mock elections preparing women for voting in the presidential election.[38] Yet by 1932, Black Rhode Islanders overwhelmingly supported Democratic candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt, initiating a wide shift of Black Republicans to the Democratic party in the Northeast.

Ultimately, the Rhode Island Union of Colored Women's Clubs played a crucial role in bettering the lives of Black Rhode Islanders. Whether through suffrage advocacy, education, reform of the criminal justice system, or anti-lynching work, club members used their religious faith and club mobilization to bring about social justice in Rhode Island. While they worked closely at times with separate or sometimes cross-racial white suffrage organizations, Black club women organized their efforts within the larger movement of racial solidarity and uplift. This work within the nascent national civil rights movement demonstrates the growing strength of the NAACP, Black-owned newspapers, and Pan African movements. The Rhode Island Union of Colored Women's Clubs provides insight into the intersection of women's suffrage, World War I patriotism, cultural renaissance, and Black churches as mobilizing structures for social and political movements. Although Club President Mary E. Jackson's contributions are widely noted in the historiography of Black women's suffrage, the remaining signers of the 1916 petition are less visible in the historical record. The accompanying biographical sketches shed light on the advocacy, hope, and unity of Rhode Island Black club women as they forged new paths in politics, determined to strengthen their families, their faith and their communities in the face of racism and sexism.

List of petition signers
Mae E. Proffitt Bentley
Jacinthia Perry Brown
Daisy D. Hart
Eugenia V. Heathman
Anna V. Jones
Mary E. Ford Lysbey
Madelyn Mary Lysbey
Elizabeth N.V. McCoy
Fannie H. Phillips
Julia B. Phillips
Lucy Proffitt
Victorine Spears

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Notes:

1. "A Barren Education: Advantages Rendered Fruitless Through Prejudice," New York Age, December 10, 1887: 4.
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2. "A Barren Education," p. 4.
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3. Marie Fazio, "Rhode Island to Remove 'Plantations' Reference from Documents," New York Times, 28 June 2020, 24.
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4. https://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/exhibitions/jcbexhibit/Pages/exhibSlavery.html and Charles Rappleye, Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade and the American Revolution, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006, 232.
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5. https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/eras/civil-war-reconstruction/migration-of-negroes-into-northern-cities-1917/
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6. "News of Greater New York," New York Age, February 1, 1917, p. 8.
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7. For more on Black fraternal associations, see Theda Skocpol and Jennifer Lynn Oser, "Organization despite Adversity: The Origins and Development of African American Fraternal Associations." Social Science History Vol. 28, No. 3, (Fall, 2004), pp. 367-437.
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8. 1971 National Register of Historic Places application description of Congdon Street Church, based on Rev. Leardrew L. Johnson's 1965 book, A Brief Historical Sketch of the Congdon St. Baptist Church of Providence, Rhode Island, from 1819-1965.
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9. Preservation Rhode Island_congdonstreetbaptistchurch
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10. Lee, Maureen D. Sissieretta Jones: The Greatest Singer of her Race, 1868-1933. University of South Carolina Press, 2012, p. 4-8.
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11. "Providence People: Affairs of the Churches: Social and Personal," New York Age, November 12, 1887: 4.
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12. "Conference of Women's Clubs," The Freeman, March 28, 1908, 2.
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13. Earline Rae Ferguson, "The Woman's Improvement Club of Indianapolis: Black Women Pioneers in Tuberculosis Work, 1903-1938," Indiana Magazine of History, Vol. 84, No. 3, September 1988, 237-238.
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14. Fannie Barrier Williams, "The Club Movement among Colored Women of America", 1900, p. 67, In The New Negro, Readings on Race, Representation, and African American Culture, 1892-1938, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Princeton University Press, 2007.
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15. LaVonne Leslie, The History of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs: A Legacy of Service, Xlibris Corporation, 2012, 1.
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16. "Women's Clubs: For Working Girls" Providence Journal, October 18, 1908: 25.
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17. "Women's Clubs," p.25.
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18. "School has Commencement," Providence Journal, May 2, 1914, p. 3
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19. "K. of C. Sends Negro Secretaries Overseas," November 9, 1918, New York Age, p. 2.
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20. https://www.nps.gov/people/charlottabass.htm; Jessica Bennett, "Overlooked No More: Before Kamala Harris, There Was Charlotta Bass," New York Times, September 4, 2020, B8; https://vault.fbi.gov/charlotta-a.-bass
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21. "Colored Women Denied Work in Rhode Island," November 9, 1918, New York Age, p. 2.
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22. Thomas J. Morgan, "WWI 100 Years: Industrious R.I. Turns to War Effort," Providence Journal, July 24, 2014, p.1; preservationri_rhode-island-state-house.pdf
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23. "Sunshine Club in Providence, Banquets Ex-Governor Utter and Prominent Negro Women," New York Age, June 10, 1909: 9.
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24. Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850-1920. Indiana University Press, 1998, p. 103-04.
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25. "Pawtucket: Colored Residents Object to 'Birth of a Nation': Meeting of Protest Held," Providence Journal, February 17, 1916: 12.
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26. "Mrs. R. M. Lafollette Talks in Providence Tells Colored Women Votes Will Not Make Them Poor Housekeepers." Pawtucket Times, December 17, 1914: 3.
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27. "Meeting Opens: Mrs. R.M. La Follette Talks," Providence Journal, December 16, 1914: 4.
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28. "YWCA Sending Workers and Race Women in Industrial Plants," New York Age, November 9, 1918: s. 1,5.
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29. James W. Johnson, "Views and Reviews," New York Age, November 23, 1918: 4.
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30. Johnson, "Views and Reviews," New York Age, November 23, 1918: 4.
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31. "Norwich, Connecticut," New York Age, January 29, 1914: 5.
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32. "Norwich, Connecticut," New York Age, February 26, 1914: 5
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33. "Additional Report of Norwich Convention," New York Age, August 27, 1908: 2.
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34. "Women's Clubs," Providence Journal, October 10, 1915: 44.
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35. Elisa M. Miller, "Uncovering the Lives of Ordinary Suffragists," The Bridge: A Joint Edition of the Journals of Newport History and Rhode Island History, Fall 2020, 20.
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36. Sara M. Algeo, The Story of a Sub-Pioneer, Providence, Rhode Island, Snow and Farnham, 1925, 162.
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37. Miller, "Uncovering the Lives of Ordinary Suffragists," 24.
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38. "Providence, R.I.," New York Age, October 2, 1920: 4.
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