When Mary Latimer McLendon returned to Atlanta with her family in 1868, women were expected to remain firmly outside of politics. In nineteenth-century Georgia, southern ladies were considered morally superior to men and obligated to use their moralizing influence on domestic pursuits, maintaining a Christian home and raising children. But as McLendon and other Georgian women saw the state move away from its agrarian roots to an increasingly urban and industrial future, they began fighting to expand women’s roles to include political activism. In 1892 McLendon joined the newly-formed Georgia Woman Suffrage Association (GWSA), an organization dedicated to gaining voting rights for white women in the state. Elected president of GWSA in 1896, she delivered speeches promoting suffrage for white women on the basis that it would allow them to fulfill their domestic duties by protecting the sanctity of their homes and communities from the damaging effects of urbanization and industrialization. As factories dotted the landscape and cities grew, support for woman suffrage gained momentum in Georgia during the 1910s. However, many male voters remained ambivalent and when a federal amendment that would give women the right to vote was proposed in the Georgia state legislature in 1919, white male politicians promptly rejected it. Despite Georgia’s rejection of the measure, it would become the nineteenth amendment added to the U.S. Constitution in 1920, giving women in all states the right to vote (though in practice, this amendment only protected white women’s right to vote).

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