Though Rhode Island’s population of black women was a small minority in the early 1900s, the largest women’s organization in the state to publicly support women’s suffrage was the Union of Colored Women’s Clubs. One of the reasons these Black women’s groups were so influential in the women’s suffrage movement was the work of dedicated organizers like Bertha Higgins. Higgins was a black suffragist and civil rights advocate in Providence in the early 1900s. Click to Read the Whole Story .