and black physicians worked at the hospital, along with Bethune's student nurses. This hospital went on to save many black lives within the twenty years that it operated. During that time, both black and white people in the community relied on help from the McLeod hospital. After an explosion at a nearby construction site, the hospital took in injured black workers. The hospital and its nurses were also praised for their efforts with the 1918 influenza outbreak. During this outbreak, the hospital was full and had to overflow into the school's auditorium. In 1931, Daytona's public hospital, Halifax, agreed to open a separate hospital for people of color. Black people would not fully integrate into the public hospital's main location until the 1960s. Career as a public leader Suffrage activism After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, which enacted women's suffrage, Bethune continued her efforts to help Blacks gain access to the polls. She solicited donations to help Black voters pay poll taxes, provided tutoring for voter registration literacy tests at Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute, and planned mass voter registration drives. National Association of Colored Women In 1896, the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) was formed to promote the needs of black women. Bethune served as the Florida chapter president of the NACW from 1917 to 1925. She worked to register black voters, which was resisted by white society and had been made almost impossible by various obstacles in Florida law and practices controlled by white administrators. She was threatened by members of the resurgent Ku Klux Klan in those years. Bethune also served as the president of the Southeastern Federation of Colored Women's Clubs from 1920 to 1925, which worked to improve opportunities for black women. She was elected as national president of the NACW in 1924. While the organization struggled to raise funds for regular operations, Bethune envisioned acquiring a headquarters and hiring a professional executive secretary; she implemented this when NACW bought a property at 1318 Vermont Avenue in Washington, DC. She led it to be the first black-controlled organization with headquarters in the capital. Gaining a national reputation, in 1928, Bethune was invited to attend the Child Welfare Conference called by Republican President Calvin Coolidge. In 1930 President Herbert Hoover appointed her to the White House Conference on Child Health. Southeastern Association of Colored Women's Clubs The Southeastern Federation of Colored Women's Clubs (eventually