Bennett, Belle H. An Outline of the World-wide Movement for the Liberation of Women. Nashville, TN: Williams, 1910.

Author: Bennett, Belle H.

Title: An Outline of the World-wide Movement for the Liberation of Women.

Publisher: Nashville, TN: Williams Printing Co., 1910. [Available to subscribers through Adam Matthew, Marlborough, Everyday Life & Women in America c.1800-1920.]

This 24-page pamphlet provides a chronological as well as geographical survey of the rights of women, globally. The end of the pamphlet quotes from James Russell Lowell's poem, "A Glance Behind the Curtain" with a powerful call for women's right to vote -- "New times demand new measures and new men..." The author, Isabel "Belle" Harris Bennett (1852-1922) of Richmond, Kentucky, was an indefatigable church worker and suffragist. She had already established a training school for missionaries in Missouri by 1892 (later relocated to Nashville, Tenn. and named Scarritt College for Christian Workers) and its sister school, the Sue Bennett Memorial School in London, Kentucky, in 1897. She served as President of the Woman’s Board of Home Mission Society from 1896 to 1910. Her leadership focused on urban missions, setting up nearly 50 segregated community houses serving the poor. She was an important female Methodist leader among white women in the South and a valuable suffrage proponent. In 1910 she was elected President of the Woman's Missionary Council of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and this published statement launched her efforts to win full laity rights for women within the Southern Methodist Church. Due to her efforts, women were finally admitted to full lay status in the Southern Methodist Church in 1919. Her family’s estate bordered White Hall, and she knew the Cassius Clay family well. Her brother James married suffragist Sarah Lewis "Sallie" Clay. She was a member of the Richmond Equal Rights Association.