Maybelle Stephens Mitchell

Mary Isabel "Maybelle" Stephens Mitchell was an American suffragist, clubwoman, and activist. Born into a prestigious planting family of Irish Catholic background, she was educated at the Villa Maria Convent in Quebec and the Atlanta Female Seminary in Georgia. A social and political activist, Mitchell was a leader in the women's suffrage movement in Georgia, protesting against state laws and meeting with local politicians to advocate for the rights of women, and was a member of the Atlanta Woman's Club. In 1915, she served as the president of the Atlanta Women's Suffrage League and, later, co-founded the League of Women Voters in Georgia. Mitchell helped establish the Catholic Layman's Association of Georgia, fighting against anti-Catholicism in the United States. She was the mother of author and journalist Margaret Mitchell, whose character Ellen Robillard O'Hara from Gone With the Wind may have been based on Mitchell.