Mrs. McLendon became an officer in 1892 and held official position during the entire twenty-nine years. For thirteen years she was vice-president or honorary president and for the remainder of the time president of the association. Mrs. Thomas was second honorary president for five years before her death in 1906. The following served as presidents: Miss H. Augusta Howard, 1890-1895; Mrs. Frances Cater Swift, 1895-1896; Mrs. Mary L. McLendon, 1896-1899; Mrs. Gertrude C. Thomas, 1899-1901; Miss Katherine Koch, 1901-1904; Mrs. Rose Y. Colvin, 1904-1906; Mrs. Mary L. McLendon, 1906-1921.[34]
In 1900 the same suffrage measures presented the year before were again offered to the Legislature with the same barren result. The Southern Chautauqua invited the association to hold an all day meeting and also engaged Miss Frances A. Griffin of Alabama to lecture. F. Henry Richardson, editor of the Atlanta Journal, and Lucian Knight, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, brought the "woman's rights movement" as prominently before the public as they were permitted to do by the managers of those newspapers.
On Nov. 25, 26, 1901, the State convention was held in the Universalist Church of Atlanta. Addresses were made by Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National Association; Mrs. Thomas, Mrs. Alice Daniels and Mrs. McLendon. The meeting adjourned early in the afternoon to go to the Atlanta Women's Club room, where Mrs. Catt was invited to address that body. The night meeting was held in the hall of the House of Representatives, where Mrs. Catt, Mr. Richardson and the Hon. Robert R. Hemphill of South Carolina addressed a large and appreciative audience. The convention decided to employ a State lecturer and organizer.
With but two exceptions State conventions or conferences were held every year, always in Atlanta until 1919, in the Congregational and Universalist churches, in the Grand Building, the hall of the Federation of Labor, the Carnegie Library, the Hotel Ansley and the Piedmont Hotel. The membership gradually increased, a series of literary meetings in the winter of 1902 adding fifty names. This year a committee was appointed to revise the charter of Atlanta and the officers of the association appeared before it and asked that it include Municipal suffrage for women. The sub-committee on franchises recommended that instead it provide for women on school, hospital, park and health boards, but the general committee reported adversely. The Atlanta branch protested to Mayor Livingstone Mims against the injustice of not allowing women taxpayers to vote on the proposed $400,000 bond issue. He expressed himself in favor of woman suffrage and promised to bring the matter before the city council, but there was no result.
Miss Kate M. Gordon, national corresponding secretary, gave a most convincing address in the Carnegie Library the next year, 1903, on how the taxpaying women of Louisiana won the right to vote on questions of taxation; strong articles were published, but all the women were able to do was to post large placards at the polls, "Taxpaying women should be allowed to vote at this bond election." Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, national vice-president-at-large, came to assist at the State convention and delivered her famous lecture, "The Fate of Republics." This year the association distributed 10,000 pages of suffrage literature at the Interstate Fair. It attempted to bring a bill before the Legislature for police matrons but not a member would introduce it.
During these years the suffragists found it very difficult to persuade a legislator to present a bill for raising the age of consent or compulsory education in order to take the young children out of the factories or for the enfranchisement of women. In 1905, at the request of the National Association that fraternal greetings should be sent to various organizations, Mrs. McLendon, who had been a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union since 1890, carried them to its convention and made an earnest but unsuccessful effort to have it adopt a franchise department. Thousands of pieces of suffrage literature were distributed at the State Fair. In 1906 memorial services were held for the great leader, Susan B. Anthony, and the association carried out to its full power all the State work planned by the National Board, including a petition to the Legislature to pass a resolution asking Congress to submit a Federal Suffrage Amendment.
The membership of the association was increased in 1907 by the addition of three prominent W. C. T. U. officials, Mrs. J. J. Ansley, Mrs. Jennie Hart Sibley and Mrs. L. W. Walker, who were promptly appointed superintendents of Church Work, Legislation and Petition and Christian Citizenship. Miss Jean Gordon of New Orleans and Mrs. Florence Kelley of New York made splendid addresses in favor of woman suffrage when they came to Atlanta in April to attend the Child Labor Convention. Dr. Shaw gave a stirring suffrage speech in the hall of the House of Representatives on May 4.
The evening sessions of the annual convention in 1908 were held in the Senate Chamber of the Capitol. Miss Laura Clay, Mrs. Sibley, Miss H. Augusta Howard and W. S. Witham were the speakers, with Mrs. McLendon presiding. Miss Clay's address, entitled Who Works Against Woman Suffrage? created a profound impression and she was of much assistance. Mrs. McLendon was invited to speak before the convention of the Georgia Agricultural Association, one of the oldest in the State, on Woman's Education and Woman's Rights. A rising vote of thanks was accorded her and the address ordered printed in the minutes. The State Prohibition convention placed a strong woman suffrage plank in its platform and the delegates to the national convention were instructed to vote for one if it was offered. Mr. Witham, the Rev. James A. Gordon and Mr. Barker, editor of The Southern Star, worked faithfully for this plank.
In 1909, at the request of the National Association, letters were written to Georgia's Senators and Representatives in Congress, asking them to vote for a Federal Woman Suffrage Amendment. Polite but non-committal replies were received from Senators Clay and Bacon and Representatives Griggs and Lewis. The other eight evidently did not consider disfranchised women worthy of an answer. The city council of Atlanta decided that its charter was forty years behind the times and again a committee of forty-nine men was appointed to draw up a new one. The Civic League, an Atlanta auxiliary to the State Suffrage Association, set to work to have this new charter recognize the rights of the women taxpayers. It was discovered that the women paid taxes on more than $13,000,000 worth of real and personal property in the city. Several hundred personal letters were written to leading taxpaying women asking their opinion of the league's movement; only favorable replies were received and many friends of the cause developed among the influential women. Strong articles were published in the city papers and widely copied throughout the State, but the charter entirely ignored the claims of women. Many letters were written to Republican and Democratic delegates asking them to vote for a suffrage plank in their platforms. The annual convention was not held in Macon, as intended, because there was so much sentiment against it in that city. This year women in the Methodist Church South became active to secure laity rights, which had been granted to women members in the North, East and West after they had worked years for it, but the bishops in the South were bitterly opposed to it. Mrs. Mary Harris Armor, the well-known national organizer and lecturer for the W. C. T. U., and four years president for Georgia, joined the suffrage association.
The National Association's petition to Congress had been distributed throughout the State for signatures and returned to Washington. In 1910 letters were written to President Taft, to the members of Congress from Georgia and to Governor "Joe" Brown, as requested by Dr. Shaw, national president. Senator Clay and Representatives W. C. Brantley, S. A. Roddenberry and W. C. Adamson were the only ones who could spare time to answer. Atlanta was to have an election for a three-million dollar bond issue on February 15, Susan B. Anthony's birthday, and the Mayor and president of the Chamber of Commerce had appealed to the City Federation of Women's Clubs to "make the men go to the polls to vote for bonds." The suffragists distributed broadcast a poster headed by a cartoon by Louis Gregg representing women of all sorts, armed with brooms, umbrellas, rolling pins, etc., driving the men to the polls.