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Belle Kearney

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Belle Kearney
Member of the Mississippi Senate
from the 18th district
In office
1924–1932
Personal details
Born(1863-03-06)March 6, 1863
Flora, Mississippi
DiedFebruary 27, 1939(1939-02-27) (aged 75)
Jackson, Mississippi
Political partyDemocratic
A slaveholder's daughter

Carrie Belle Kearney (March 6, 1863 – February 27, 1939) was an American temperance reformer, suffragist, teacher, white supremacist, and the first woman elected to the Mississippi State Senate.[1] A Democrat, she served in the state senate in 1924 and 1926. She lived in Flora, Mississippi, and represented Madison County.[2]

Early life[edit]

Kearney was born on her family's plantation in Flora, Mississippi. Her father, Walter Guston Kearney, was a slave-owning planter who suffered significant financial losses after the Civil War.[3]

Belle Kearney attended Canton Young Ladies' Academy, but was forced to leave due to the cost of tuition. She educated herself, and opened a private school in a spare bedroom of the plantation house. She later began teaching in the public school system.[3]

Activism, beliefs and works[edit]

Kearney was a Methodist, and a member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She was also active in the American suffrage movement, and was hired as a speaker and lobbyist by the National American Woman Suffrage Association. In this role, she traveled throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, and was a respected orator.[1]

Kearney was a white supremacist, and used her public speaking events to advocate her racial views. While delivering an address at the National American Woman Suffrage Association Convention in 1903,[4] she said that women's suffrage would bring about "immediate and durable white supremacy, honestly attained".[3]

Kearney authored two novels: A Slaveholder's Daughter (1900), and Conqueror or Conquered: Or, the Sex Challenge Answered (1921). She also edited Mama Flower (1918).[5]

Elected office[edit]

In 1922, Kearney ran unsuccessfully for the office of U.S. Senator from Mississippi.

In 1924, she was elected to the Mississippi State Senate as a Democrat representing Madison County, the first woman in Mississippi to hold that office.[1]

Death[edit]

Kearney never married and had no children. She spent her last years on the family plantation in Flora, and died of cancer in 1939 at the home of a friend in Jackson. She was buried in Kearney Cemetery near the family plantation.[5]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c "Carrie Belle Kearney". National Women's History Museum. Retrieved May 27, 2014.
  2. ^ Women State and Territorial Legislators by Elizabeth M. Cox page 167
  3. ^ a b c Lemon, Armistead; Henderson, Harris. "Belle Kearney, 1863-1939". University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Retrieved 2020-08-15.
  4. ^ Program of the Thirty-Fifth Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. p. 16.
  5. ^ a b Gandy, Sheena (January 2008). "Biography of Belle Kearney". Mississippi Writers & Musicians. Archived from the original on 2015-06-10. Retrieved 2014-05-27.