rsing woman suffrage introduced by Professor Frederick
Davis Mellen of the State Agricultural and Mechanical College, the son
of the late Reverend Thomas L. Mellen, one of Mississippi's earliest
suffragists. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union here as elsewhere
was a great school for women, teaching them the need of the ballot,
and the majority of its members were suffragists but all through the
years the minority, who did not want the question brought into the
Union, overruled their wishes. Mrs. Harriet B. Kells, the president
for many years and a lifelong suffragist, was not able to overcome
this situation and it never endorsed woman suffrage.

There never has been any organized opposition among Mississippi women.
During the session of the Legislature in 1920 there was an open
attempt to organize opposition to ratification of the Federal
Amendment but it failed.

LEGISLATIVE ACTION. After the suffrage association in 1913 decided to
ask for the submission of an amendment to the State constitution to
enfranchise women the preliminary work of interviewing legislators and
distributing appropriate literature was conducted by the chairman of
the Legislative Committee, Mrs. Nellie Nugent Somerville, the
president, Mrs. Annie Kinkead Dent, and other members. The president
at her own expense sent the _Woman's Journal_ and other literature to
all legislators for three months. The concurrent resolution asking for
the submission was introduced in the House Jan. 9, 1914, by N. A. Mott
of Yazoo county. Senator Hall Sanders of Tallahatchie county offered
it in the Senate three days later. The House Committee on
Constitution, to which the bill was referred, granted a hearing, at
which speeches were made by Mrs. Monroe McClurg, Miss Belle Kearney,
Mrs. Somerville, Miss Kate Gordon (La.), Judge Allen Thompson and
Colonel Clay Sharkey. The committee reported unfavorably by a majority
of one. A minority report was made by the chairman, Henry A. Minor of
Noxubee county, and others. Representative Mott offered a resolution
inviting the women to present their case in the House the next day,
which was carried by a close vote about one o'clock in the afternoon
and the hearing was set for ten the next morning. The _Daily News_ had
gone to press and the _Clarion Ledger_, a morning paper, had some time
before forbidden its columns to any news or notices in any way
favoring woman suffrage or advertising it.

The president of the Equity Leag