In the spring of 1915 the State convention was held in Greenville. Dr. Shaw was a guest, stopping on her way to Jackson, where under the auspices of the Equity League she spoke in the House of Representatives to a large audience, many standing throughout her address, which made a profound impression. The convention was well attended. Some of the interesting features were "an hour for men' presided over by Congressman B. G. Humphries, with excellent speeches; a five o'clock tea, given by the Belvidere Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the presentation of the motion picture play, Your Girl and Mine. Miss Pauline V. Orr was elected president. Miss Orr served as president for two years, widely extending the influence of the association through the hundreds of young women who came under her instruction at the Industrial Institute and College, where for many years she held the chair of English.
The annual convention was held in 1916 in the city hall in Meridian, where nineteen years before the State Woman Suffrage Association was organized, and Mrs. Pattie Ruffner Jacobs of Alabama, auditor of the National Association, made an address on the opening evening. During the following year eight new leagues were formed. The convention met in Starkville in April, 1917, and addresses were made by Dr. Shaw, Miss Margaret Hamilton Erwin, president of the Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association; Mrs. Walter McNab Miller, first vicepresident of the National Association; Mrs. W. H. Price, president of the Mississippi Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and Mrs. Edward F. McGehee, president of the State Federation of Women's Clubs. Miss Orr, the president, declining re-election was succeeded by Mrs. McGehee. The United States had now entered the war and the suffragists began to concentrate on war work. As chairman of the Woman's Committee, Mississippi Division of the National Council of Defense, she was able to help popularize woman suffrage.[1]
In April, 1918, a one-day conference was held in the Capitol
- ↑ Besides those mentioned the following served on the official board: Mrs. Jimmie Andrews Lipscomb, Mrs. Nella Lawrence Lee, Miss Mattie Kirkpatrick, Mrs. Annie Kinkead Dent, Mre. Ella O. Biggs, Mrs. Alma Dorsey Birdsall, Mrs. Durrant, Mrs, Edith Marshall Tucker, Mrs. Mary Powell Crane, Miss Ethel Clagett, Mrs. C. C. Miller, Mrs. T. F. Buntin, Miss Estelle Crane, Mise Nannie Herndon Rice.
