City's women flocked to exercise a new right, August 20, 1995

The article discusses women of Danbury and their first time voting in the presidential election of 1920, as well as the overall history of the women’s suffrage movement. The Republican candidate was Warren G. Harding and the Democrat candidate was James M. Cox. Women like Irene Walsh Stock who reflected on this time in this 1995 News Times interview. In 1920 she was a weaver at Tweedy Silk Mill and created hatbands. A total of 3,372 Danbury women voted between Aug. 26, the official date of the signing of the 19th Amendment, and Oct. 15. Women were the first in line in both Danbury and Bethel. “In Danbury’s Second Voting District, Elizabeth Hyslop was the first person as well as the first woman to vote”. Mrs. Howard Mackenzie was the first Bethel resident to cast a ballot and was “the first Bethel woman to have registered to vote”. However, in many places across America black and Hispanic women were denied their right to vote despite arriving at the polls in large numbers. In the following years women’s groups lobbied for one of the first mother-and-child nutritional programs. Texas women’s group the “Petticoat Lobby” passed “its whole legislative agenda in four years”. |Identifier: ms069_devlin_1995_08_20