League of Women Voters

From the Newton Daily News:

Ninety years ago, Iowa native, Carrie Chapman Catt first proposed a League of Women Voters to “finish the fight” and work to end all discrimination against women.

And so the League of Women Voters was founded on Valentine’s Day in 1920, six months before the ratification of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote. In 1920, after a 72-year struggle, passage of the 19th Amendment appeared to be imminent, and members of the National American Woman Suffrage Association met to form the League of Women Voters, the organization to educate the newly franchised women to effectively use the vote.

The Newton unit of LWV was organized 1934 through the efforts of Mrs. E. L. Gladys Nelson, who lived in Grinnell. After she and her husband moved to Newton, Nelson organized a unit in 1934 in Newton at the urging of Grinnell League members.