Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/144

 this year it enacted a number of laws for which the association had long worked.

On Feb. 12, 13, 1917, officers of the National Association held a suffrage school in Atlanta. When the Legislature assembled in June all the members found on their desks a notice that bills granting Municipal suffrage to women, also full suffrage, and one to raise the age of consent from 10 years to 18 would be introduced. The State association sent the national suffrage organ, the Woman Citizen, for a year to the United States Senators and fourteen Representatives in Congress; to the members of the Legislature and all State officials. The Atlanta association again conducted a three months’ suffrage school. The State convention in December in the Assembly Hall of the Piedmont Hotel closed with a luncheon at which many prominent men and women were present. Representatives John C. White and John Y. Smith at that time pledged themselves to introduce and work for suffrage bills. During this and the following year the suffrage associations did their full share of war work. Mrs. McLendon represented the State association on the Women’s Council of National Defense, and Mrs. Martin, first vice-president, was chairman of the State Americanization Committee.

In 1918 the Parent-Teacher Association adopted strong suffrage resolutions. The Baptist and Methodist churches South granted laity rights to women. State suffrage headquarters were deluged with requests for literature by educational institutions for debates. The State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Professor M. L. Brittain, had been an advocate of votes for women many years. The Atlanta Journal gave the State association a column in its Sunday issues, which Mrs. Martin edited. Raymond E. White wrote a number of fine suffrage editorials for the Constitution. In July the Hearst papers circulated a petition for a Federal Suffrage Amendment and the Atlanta association secured 5,000 names and other auxiliaries 1,000.

On May 3, 1919, a progressive city Democratic Central Committee gave Atlanta women the right to vote in the Municipal primary election to be held September 3. A Central Committee of Women Citizens was at once elected at a mass meeting of