It secured a charter and prepared for an aggressive state-wide suffrage campaign. A chairman for each of the twelve congressional districts was appointed and instructed to organize in her district. This year for the first time a hearing was granted before the House Committee on Constitutional Amendments. Mrs. Felton and Mrs. Rose Ashby spoke for the association, Mrs. Cheatham and Mrs. Frances Smith Whiteside for the Woman Suffrage League. The association distributed 40,000 pages of leaflets, fliers, newspapers, etc.; about a dozen of the leading newspapers were supplied with local and national suffrage news and members of the Legislature with suffrage literature. In 1900, when the first National W. C. T. U. convention was held in Atlanta, woman suffrage was a forbidden subject at all temperance meetings in Georgia. In 1914, when the second was held, Mrs. McLendon, president of the State Suffrage Association, was selected to welcome the White Ribboners in behalf of the suffragists of the State.[1]
The annual convention of the State association was held July 21, 22, in the ballroom of the Hotel Ansley, beautifully decorated for the occasion. Miss Kate M. Gordon aided largely in making it a success. Mrs. Annie Fletcher of Oldham, England, visited Atlanta this year and spoke on the suffrage situation there. Mrs. Georgia McIntyre Wheeler, a practicing attorney of West Virginia, helped greatly in securing the Woman Lawyer Bill. Atlanta and Waycross suffragists applied to the city governments to grant women Municipal suffrage. The association did not parade on May 2, as requested by the National Board, but the president made a suffrage speech on the steps of the State Capitol and members sold copies of the Woman's Journal. The Rey. A. M. Hewlett, pastor of St. Marks Methodist Church South, accompanied Mrs. McLendon and Attorney Grossman to Cox College in March and by invitation of its president they gave addresses in favor of suffrage for women before the student body.
- ↑ In October, 1919, when Mrs. McLendon attended the W. C. T. U. convention, she was called to the platform on the opening night, presented as a "brave pioneer" and highly eulogized by the present and former State presidents. The audience gave her the Chautauqua salute and the White Ribbon cheer and in return she gave them a woman suffrage speech, which was enthusiastically received. Nevertheless the State society never endorsed votes for women, although local societies did so.
