The Mississippi Valley Historical Association was formed on October 17 and 18, 1907 at a meeting in Lincoln, Nebraska, of seven historical societies of the Mississippi Valley. The organization, devoted to studying the Mississippi Valley region, began a tradition of holding an annual meeting each year, and began quarterly publication in 1914 of the "Mississippi Valley Historical Review". As the scholarly emphasis of the organization and its journal developed and spread over time, its initial emphasis on the Mississippi Valley came under sharp challenge from members who wanted a better title and a wider scope. Ray Billington identifies the four issues that caused bitter quarrelling: the desire to use the association's prestige to fight for liberal reforms, to change the association's name to represent a national scope, to democratize its oligarchical structure, and to take a firm stand against racial discrimination in terms of hotels and meeting cities. The reformers were successful in the mail ballot and the "Mississippi Valley Historical Review" was renamed the "Journal of American History" and the organization, correspondingly was renamed the Organization of American Historians.