Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/145

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GEORGIA
131

women to see that they registered and nearly 4,000 did so, paying one dollar for the privilege.

Mrs. McLendon represented the State Association at the convention of the National Association in St. Louis in March, 1919. On May 21 she and her sister, Mrs. Felton, sat in the House of Representatives in Washington and had the pleasure of hearing W. D. Upshaw, member from the fifth congressional district of Georgia, vote for the submission of the Federal Suffrage Amendment, the only Representative from the State to do so. On June 4 the new U. S. Senator, William J. Harris of Georgia, voted for the submission of this amendment, giving one of the long needed two votes. The official board of the State Association through Mrs. McLendon mailed to each member of the Legislature a personal letter with copies of letters from Mrs. J. K. Ottley, the Democratic Executive Committee woman from Georgia, and the eminent clergyman, Dr. J. B. Gambrell, urging the members to ratify the Federal Suffrage Amendment. The annual convention of 1919 was held in the auditorium of the Hotel Piedmont, Atlanta, on December 5.

A League of Women Voters was organized in Atlanta in March, 1920, out of the Equal Suffrage Party, but the State association decided that this action was premature, since there were no women voters in Georgia, and that the old association, organized in 1890, would never disband until women could vote on the same terms as men.

On June 1, in response to a petition of fifty representative women of Atlanta, a hearing in charge of Mrs. McLendon was granted by the chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee, at the request of Mayor Key. After a number had spoken a motion was made to let the women vote in the white municipal primary in Atlanta and was carried with only four negative votes. The Atlanta and the Young People's Suffrage Associations endorsed the re-election of Mayor Key and worked for him, and he was returned by a majority of three to one on July 28. Afterwards several other cities and villages permitted women to vote in the primaries and on bond issues.

After the Federal Suffrage Amendment was ratified in Aug: 1920, it was announced that women would not be permitted to