After the AWSA convention in Cincinnati in 1888 the Clay sisters and a group of other women including Josephine K. Henry founded the Kentucky Equal Rights Association (KERA). Laura Clay was again elected president and served until 1912. One of the missions of the KERA was to improve the legal status of women in Kentucky and increase educational opportunities. She was succeeded by her distant cousin Madeline McDowell Breckinridge. The organization lobbied successfully for a range of legislative reforms, such as protecting married women's wages and property, requiring state women's mental hospitals to have female doctors on staff, inducing Transylvania University and Central University to admit women students, raising the age of marriage consent for girls to 16 from 12, and establishing juvenile courts. They also inspired the University of Kentucky to build its first dormitory for women.
