renamed as the Southeastern Association of Colored Women's Clubs) elected Bethune as president after its first conference in 1920 at the Tuskegee Institute. They intended to reach out to Southern women (specifically white women) for support and unity in gaining rights for black women. The women met in Memphis, Tennessee, to discuss interracial problems. In many respects, all of the women agreed about what needed to be changed until they came to the topic of suffrage. The white women at the conference tried to strike down a resolution on black suffrage. The SACWC responded by issuing a pamphlet entitled Southern Negro Women and Race Co-Operation; it delineated their demands regarding conditions in domestic service, child welfare, conditions of travel, education, lynching, the public press, and voting rights. The group went on to help register black women to vote after they were granted sufferage resulting from the passage of the constitutional amendment. However, in both Florida and other Southern states, black men and women experienced disenfranchisement by discriminatory application of literacy and comprehension tests and requirements to pay poll taxes, lengthy residency requirements, and governmental insistence upon keeping and displaying relevant records. National Council of Negro Women In 1935 Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) in New York City, bringing together representatives of 28 different organizations to work to improve the lives of black women and their communities. Bethune said of the council: It is our pledge to make a lasting contribution to all that is finest and best in America, to cherish and enrich her heritage of freedom and progress by working for the integration of all her people regardless of race, creed, or national origin, into her spiritual, social, cultural, civic, and economic life, and thus aid her to achieve the glorious destiny of a true and unfettered democracy. In 1938, the NCNW hosted the White House Conference on Negro Women and Children, demonstrating the importance of black women in democratic roles. During World War II, the NCNW gained approval for black women to be commissioned as officers in the Women's Army Corps. Bethune also served as a political appointee and the Special Assistant to the Secretary of War during the war. In the 1990s, the headquarters for the National Council for Negro Women moved to Pennsylvania Avenue, centrally located between the White House and the U.S. Capitol. The former headquarters, where Bethune also lived at