Charlestown
women in politics
By
Catherine O’Reilly Collette
This resolution gave women the vote in Rhode Island |
March
is Women’s History Month and a fine time to mark the progress women have made
in Rhode Island politics over the past century.
In
1922, only two years after the US
Constitution was amended to give women the vote, Rhode Island elected the
first woman to the Rhode Island Legislature. She was Isabelle Ahern O’Neill of
Providence and was elected to the House of Representatives and then the RI
Senate where she served until 1934. She fought for pensions for widows and helped
to create a Rhode Island Narcotics Board which was a model for its time.
She
was quoted as saying “I will not wear a
hat to session nor do I want the men to stop smoking or stop doing anything
they normally do….I want to be treated the same.”
Ms.
O’Neill began her career as an actor and orator, perfect skills for
political life. She served in the state legislature until she was recruited to
work in the Roosevelt Administration where she worked until 1943, whereupon she
came back to Rhode Island to work in the state Labor Department. She lived to
age 94 and died in 1975.