Belle Harris Bennett (December 3, 1852 – July 20, 1922) led the struggle for and won laity rights for women in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

Much of her work including fundraising and organizational efforts to provide higher education for a new professional class of social workers and community organizers in the Southern Methodist Church in the U.S. and abroad.

It was through her mother's side of the family, the Chenaults, that she traced her lineage for acceptance in the Daughters of the American Revolution[1] and the Colonial Dames of America.

Later in life, after graduating from Yale, Waller handled Belle's personal wealth, her philanthropic endeavors and helped with her mission society projects' finances.

[2] At the age of 11, Belle was enrolled in Dr. Robert Breck's private school in Richmond, Kentucky, six miles away from "Homelands"—boarding in town during the winter months.

[2] At the age of twenty-three, Belle attended a revival led by the evangelist Dr. Lapsley McKee and took a vow of church membership.

By the end of the conference, Belle had garnered support to start gathering funding from throughout the Southern Methodist Church to establish a training school.

The cornerstone of the new building was laid on June 25, 1896, and eight cottages to house students along with a dormitory for girls were built for what came to be named the Sue Bennett Memorial College.

In response to the large increase in immigrants from the Pacific Rim in California, the Society started up night schools and organized Korean and Japanese Southern Methodist Churches.

With the Society's headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee, the local City Mission Board established a settlement house which then served as an example to other cities—12 institutions by 1903.

To maintain a consistency and high standard of service by the church women, Bennett sought support for the training of deaconesses.

Her plans for the training of missionary women evolved when she spoke at the Woman's Session of the Methodist Ecumenical Conference during the summer of 1901 in London.

[2] At the General Conference in 1910, Bennett organized a campaign to lobby the male leaders to grant women the full rights and privileges of the laity.

The issue was referred to the Committee on Revisals and Bennett was invited to speak on behalf of the hundreds of memorials that had come into the General Conference.

Bennett then started a Laity Committee that would organize a communications campaign throughout the South to make sure that a good number of women delegates would be sent to the General Conferences.

[2] After attending the World's Missionary Conference at Edinburgh, Scotland in June 1910, Bennett traveled through Italy then Cairo and Palestine learning about Christian holy sites and women's status in other countries.

This commission produced a report on the status of women in Latin America and the role of Protestant churches in the eighteen counties, including pen-and-ink pictures.

Bennett was a great advocate for supporting local efforts to provide a more equal playing field for women wage-earners, people of color and non-English-speaking immigrants.

Here are a few of the schools, city mission houses and state universities' dormitories built specifically for female students: Their farm was situated within an area called Whitehall (a name later used for Clermont, home of the Cassius and Mary Jane Warfield Clay family).

In 1912 she began a two-year stint in serving on the KERA Executive Committee for the NAWSA, an important connection between the national and local suffragists during a time of great change in the movement.

During the winter of 1920-1921 she put herself in hospital in Lexington, Kentucky for "rest and treatment" before she attempted one last meeting in Memphis with the Women's Council.

For the first time since she was President, she did not attend the Council Annual meeting at San Antonio in April 1922, nor could she undertake the trip to Hot Springs, Arkansas to serve as a Kentucky delegate to the General Conference.