Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/682

 666 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE mond in the interest of woman suffrage was addressed by Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, with Dr. Lyon G. Tyler, president of William and Mary College, in the chair. The first State conven- tion was held this year in Richmond with delegates present from Norfolk, Lynchburg, Williamsburg and Highland Springs so- cieties, and individual suffragists from Fredericksburg and Char- lottesville. In 1912 the convention was held in Norfolk with delegates from twenty-two leagues. In 1913 it met in Lynch- burg and the reports showed that 2,500 new members had been added and Mrs. Valentine had made 100 public speeches. An outdoor demonstration was held in Richmond on the steps of the State Capitol, May 2, 1914, in conformity with the nation- wide request of the National Association, and the celebration was continued in the evening. The convention was held in Roa- noke, where it was reported that forty-five counties had been organized in political units and that the Virginia Suffrage News, a monthly paper, was being published at State headquarters under the management of Mrs. Alice Overbey Taylor. In 1915 street meetings were inaugurated and held in Rich- mond from May till Thanksgiving, and in Norfolk, Newport News, Portsmouth, Lynchburg and Warrenton. For the first time women appeared on the same platform with the candidates for the Legislature and presented the claims of the women of Virginia to become a part of the electorate. The May Day celebration was held on the south portico of the Capitol on the afternoon of May I, after a morning devoted to selling from street booths copies of the Woman's Journal, suffrage flags, but- tons and postcards. A band played and the decorations and ban- ners in yellow and blue, the suffrage and Virginia colors, made a beautiful picture. John S. Munce of Richmond introduced the speakers, Dr. E. N. Calisch, Rabbi of Beth Ahaba Temple; Miss Joy Montgomery Higgins of Nebraska and Miss Mabel Vernon of Washington, D. C. In December the convention was held in Richmond and the two hundred delegates marched to the office of the Governor, Henry Carter Stuart, to request him to embody in his message to the General Assembly a recom- mendation that it submit to the voters an equal suffrage amend-