[3] She imagined it to be similar to what Lucy Rider Meyer had created at the Chicago Training School for Home and Foreign Missions.

Board member Mrs. Nathan Scarritt of Kansas City, Missouri (the child of missionaries in India) was the first to offer a pledge for the new training school.

Despite some dispute within the Woman's Board, the Southern Methodist General Conference approved the plan, and work began in earnest in April 1891.

[5] In 1891 the Board of Managers of the Scarritt Bible and Training School elected Miss Laura Askew Haygood to be recalled from her missionary work in China[6] to be the principal.

But Haygood was not able to leave China so Miss Maria Layng Gibson, principal of a private high grade school in Covington, Kentucky was elected instead in 1892.

[5] In 1902 the Southern Methodist General Conference agreed to the plan presented by Belle Harris Bennett to establish the deaconess movement and the Scarritt Bible and Training School blossomed under the new standards for professionalizing women lay leaders.

[16] On April 25, 1957, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in Wightman Chapel at Scarritt College to the Conference on Christian Faith and Human Relations.

[17] The Conference on Christian Faith and Human Relations was hosted by Scarritt College and Vanderbilt Divinity School and co-sponsored by the Tennessee Council of Churches and the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen.

[18] “The salvation of the world lies in the hands of the maladjusted,” King said, “…the challenge to you is to be maladjusted to the evils of segregation [...], the madness of militarism, and the self-defeating method of physical violence.” [15] Dr. King spoke on the last day of the conference and addressed some 350 church leaders,[17] the day after receiving the Social Justice Award from the Religion and Labor Foundation in New York.

[17][20] In the spring of 1963, Lorine Chan, a Scarritt College student from Fiji, was denied service at the Campus Grill, a local “greasy spoon.”[21] Around the same time, Rev.

[21] In response to these events, Gerry Bode, Sue Thrasher, Archie Allen, Mary Pless, and others formed the Christian Action Fellowship to work against racial discrimination.

[24] Scarritt Bennett Center's programming focuses on the empowerment of women, eradication of racism, prophetic justice, radical hospitality, sacred rituals, spiritual enrichment, and transformative education.