Belle Kearney

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. A Democrat, she served in the state senate in 1924 and 1926. She lived in Flora, Mississippi, and represented Madison County.

Early life 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.

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. she said that women's suffrage would bring about "immediate and durable white supremacy, honestly attained".

Elected office 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.

Death 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.