Bethune, Mary McLeod

Mary McLeod Bethune (1875–1955) was a great African American educator, public figure in government, and black women's club activist who devoted her life to ensuring the right to education and freedom from discrimination for Black Americans. Her lifelong agenda involved education, franchise, and economic opportunity for all. Throughout her career, Bethune fought aggressively against racism, segregation, and inequalities facing Blacks. She was a leader of women, a leader of the “Black Cabinet,” and a powerful champion for racial equality. Her zeal, dedication, and missionary spirit serve as an example for all educational leaders today.

In 1875, Mary Jane McLeod was born the 15th of 17 children to two former slaves in Mayesville, South Carolina. Her time spent working the family's cotton fields helped shape Mary's keen work ethic, and a burning desire to read and write precipitated her first formal schooling around the age of 10. Scholarships enabled McLeod to attend Scotia Seminary, a school for African American girls in North Carolina, and then Dwight Moody's Bible Institute for Home and Foreign Missions in Chicago. Originally hoping to minister to the spiritual and educational needs of her ancestors, McLeod quickly decided that Africans in America should have Christian influence and education just as much as Negroes in Africa. As a young teacher in Chicago, she visited prisoners in jail, served lunch to the homeless, and counseled the residents of Chicago's slums.

In 1896, McLeod returned to the South, where, as an instructor, she honed her programmatic educational philosophy and gained experience with primary, grammar, elementary, normal, and industrial courses. She also met and married Albertus Bethune, a former schoolteacher turned haberdasher, and gave birth to one son, Albertus Jr., in 1899.

Five years later, in an era when most African American children received little or no education, Bethune established a school in Florida. The Daytona Literary and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls opened in 1904 with six pupils using crates as desks, charcoal as pencils, and crushed elderberries as ink. To finance and expand the school, Bethune encouraged people to invest in the human soul and won over many skeptics of all races.

At first, Bethune was teacher, administrator, comptroller, and custodian. As the school progressed, she was able to secure a staff that taught reading, writing, and economic skills. Bethune ran her school with a combination of unshakable faith and remarkable organizational skills. She was a brilliant speaker and an astute fund-raiser, serving as the president and trustee of the school for more than 40 years. Bethune expanded the school to a high school, then a junior college, and finally, in 1923, it merged with Cookman Institute, a Jacksonville school for boys, and became Bethune-Cookman College.

While laboring to make her school a success, Bethune turned her attention to the national scene, where she became a forceful and inspiring political representative of her people. She led a drive to register Black voters in Daytona Beach, was elected president of the Florida Federation of Colored Women in 1917, organized women's clubs to combat school segregation and the lack of health facilities among Black children, wrote numerous articles and book chapters, and encouraged the Red Cross to integrate. In the early 1930s, Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) to take on the major national issues affecting Blacks. By 1955, this organization had a membership of 800,000.

...