Mary McLeod Bethune (; July 10, 1875 – May 18, 1955) was an American educator, philanthropist, humanitarian, womanist, and civil rights activist. Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women in 1935, and proceeded to establish the Aframerican Women's Journal, which was the flagship journal of the organization. She presided over other Black American women's organizations, including the National Association for Colored Women. Shortly after joining the National Youth Administration in 1935, Bethune became the first Black woman to lead a federal agency when she was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as the head of a department within the NYA.
She started a private school for Black American students which later became Bethune-Cookman University. She was the only Black American woman to hold an official position with the US delegation that created the United Nations charter.McCluskey & Smith 2001, pp. 5–6. McLeod also held a leadership position for the American Women's Voluntary Services, which was founded by Alice Throckmorton McLean. Bethune wrote prolifically, publishing in several periodicals from 1924 to 1955.
After working on the presidential campaign for Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, she was appointed as a national advisor and worked with Roosevelt to create the Federal Council on Colored Affairs, also known as the Black Cabinet.McCluskey & Smith 2001, p. xii. Honors include the designation of her home in Daytona Beach, Florida, as a National Historic Landmark and a 1974 statue as "the first monument to honor a Black American and a woman in a public park in Washington, D.C."
Early life and education
Mary Jane McLeod was born on July 10, 1875, in a small log cabin near Mayesville, South Carolina, on a rice and cotton farm in Sumter County. She was the fifteenth of seventeen children born to Sam and Patsy ( McIntosh) McLeod, both former slaves. Retrieved January 11, 2008.Landfall, Dolores and Sims, J. (Summer, 1976). "Mary McLeod Bethune: The Educator; Also Including a Selected Annotated Bibliography", Journal of Negro Education. 45 (3) pp. 342–359. University of South Carolina website. Retrieved January 11, 2008. Patsy McLeod worked after emancipation for her former owner, earning enough to buy from him. There, Sam and their sons built the log cabin in which McLeod was born.McCluskey & Smith 2001, p. 36. McLeod grew up hearing stories from her maternal grandmother, Sophie, about resistance to slavery, and both Sophie and Patsy told McLeod that she was special. McLeod credited them both with inspiring her work toward equality.Hanson 2018, pp. 25–27.
McLeod recalled noticing racial inequality as a child, observing that the Black community had access to less material wealth and opportunity.Hanson 2018, pp. 28–29. She particularly remembered visiting the home of the Wilson's—the family that had enslaved her mother—where she explored a play house while Patsy worked. McLeod picked up a book, and one of the Wilson girls admonished her with "Put down that book, you can't read." McLeod later cited the incident as contributing to her desire for literacy and education.
When she was twelve, McLeod saw a white mob attack and nearly hang a Black man. The man had refused to blow a match out for a White man and then had shoved him to the ground. As McLeod watched, the mob nearly hung the Black man, stopped at the last moment by the sheriff. McLeod recalled later learning about both the terrifying effects of white violence and the value of allying with some white people, those she called "calm men of authority".Hanson 2018, p. 15.
In October 1886,McCluskey & Smith 2001, p.285. McLeod began attending Mayesville's one-room Black schoolhouse, Trinity Mission School, which was run by the Presbyterian Board of Missions of Freedmen and founded by Emma Jane Wilson. The school was from her home, and she walked there and back. Not all her siblings attended, so she taught her family what she had learned each day. In addition to founding the school, Wilson was McLeod's teacher, and became a significant mentor in her life.
Wilson had attended Scotia Seminary (now Barber–Scotia College). She helped McLeod attend the same school on a scholarship,Hanson 2018, p. 37. which McLeod did from 1888 to 1894.McCluskey & Smith 2001, p. 4. She attended Dwight L. Moody's Institute for Home and Foreign Missions in Chicago (now the Moody Bible Institute) from 1894 to 1895. McLeod applied to be a missionary with the Presbyterian Board of Missions, with the goal of becoming a missionary in Africa. Although her request was denied, McLeod found a new use for the skills she had learned by teaching at Haines Institute in Augusta, Georgia.
Marriage and family McLeod married Albertus Bethune in 1898. The Bethunes moved to Savannah, Georgia, where she did social work until they moved to Florida. They had a son named Albert McLeod Bethune Sr. A visiting Presbyterian minister, Coyden Harold Uggams, persuaded the couple to relocate to Palatka, Florida, to run a mission school."Mary McLeod Bethune", Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History. Gale Group, 1999. The Bethunes moved in 1899; Mary ran the mission school and began an outreach to prisoners. Albertus left the family in 1907 and relocated to South Carolina. The couple never divorced, and Albertus died in 1918 from tuberculosis.
Teaching career Foundations with Lucy Craft Laney Bethune worked as a teacher briefly at her former school in Sumter County. In 1896, she began teaching at Haines Normal and Industrial Institute in Augusta, Georgia, which was part of a Presbyterian mission organized by northern congregations. It was founded and run by Lucy Craft Laney, who was a Christian missionary and the daughter of former slaves. Laney ran her school with a Christian missionary zeal, emphasizing character and practical education for boys and girls who showed up eager to learn. Laney's mission was to imbue Christian moral education in her students to arm them for their life challenges. Of her year at Laney's school, Bethune said: I was so impressed with her fearlessness, her amazing touch in every respect, an energy that seemed inexhaustible and her mighty power to command respect and admiration from her students and all who knew her. She handled her domain with the art of a master.
Bethune adopted many of Laney's educational philosophies, including her emphasis on educating girls and women to improve the conditions of Black people; Bethune's approach added a focus on political activism.McCluskey & Smith 2001, p. 5. After one year at Haines, Bethune was transferred by the Presbyterian mission to the Kindell Institute in Sumter, South Carolina, where she met her husband.
School in Daytona After getting married and moving to Florida, Bethune became determined to start a school for girls. Bethune moved from Palatka to Daytona because it had more economic opportunity; it had become a popular tourist destination, and businesses were thriving. In October 1904, she rented a small house for $11.00 per month. She made benches and desks from discarded crates and acquired other items through charity. Bethune started the Educational and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls in 1904. She initially had six students—five girls and her son Albert. At this stage, tuition was 50 cents. The school bordered Daytona's dump. She raised money by selling homemade sweet potato pies and ice cream to crews of local workers, gathering enough to purchase additional dump land. She hired workers to build the brick building Faith Hall, paying them in part with free tuition. By 1918, Faith Hall was completed along with an additional two-story building and an auditorium. Later, McLeod had another building constructed further from the campus to educate boys who came to the school.
In the early days of her school, the students made ink for pens from elderberry juice and pencils from burned wood; they asked local businesses for furniture.McCluskey & Smith 2001, p. 67. Bethune wrote later, "I considered cash money as the smallest part of my resources. I had faith in a loving God, faith in myself, and a desire to serve."Straub, Deborah, ed., "Mary McLeod Bethune", Contemporary Heroes and Heroines, Book II. Gale Research, 1992. The school received donations of money, equipment, and labor from local Black churches. Within a year, Bethune was teaching more than 30 girls at the school. After two years of operation, 250 girls were enrolled.
Bethune also courted wealthy White organizations, such as the ladies' Palmetto Club. She invited influential White men to sit on her school board of trustees, gaining participation by James Gamble (of Procter & Gamble), Ransom Eli Olds (of Oldsmobile and REO MotorCompany) and Thomas H. White (of White Sewing Machines). When Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Institute visited in 1912, he advised her of the importance of gaining support from white benefactors for funding,McCluskey & Smith 2001, p. 69. suggesting a few ways of doing so.Robertson 2015, pp. 34–35.
The rigorous curriculum had the girls rise at 5:30 a.m. for Bible study. Some of the classes in their schedules contained, in home economics and industrial skills such as dressmaking, millinery, cooking, and other crafts emphasized a life of self-sufficiency. Students' days ended at 9 p.m. Soon Bethune added science and business courses, then high school-level math, English, and foreign languages.McCluskey. Audrey. We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible': Black Women School Founders", Signs, 22:2, Winter 1997, pp. 403–426. Bethune always sought donations to keep her school operating, and would extend offers to wealthy white philanthropists to sit on the board in order to gain favor with them. Bethune also used her skills as a baker in order to raise money. Her friendship with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt assisted her in making connections. One of Bethune's more generous donors was John D. Rockefeller, who reportedly provided a donation of $62,000.
Beginning in 1923, Daytona School merged with the coeducational Cookman Institute; run by the Methodist church, the institute was the first Black college in Florida. Bethune became president, at a time when Black women rarely headed colleges. The merger completed in 1925 and formed Daytona Cookman Collegiate Institute, a coeducational junior college.Robertson 2015, pp. 18–19. Through the Great Depression, the school, renamed Bethune-Cookman College in 1931,Robertson 2015, p. 18. continued to operate and met the educational standards of the State of Florida. Throughout the 1930s, Bethune and civil rights advocate Blake R. Van Leer worked with fellow Florida institutions to lobby for federal funding.
From 1936 to 1942, Bethune had to cut back her time as president because of her duties in Washington, D.C. Funding declined during this period of her absence. Nevertheless, by 1941, the college had developed a four-year curriculum and achieved full college status. By 1942, Bethune gave up the presidency, as her health was adversely affected by her many responsibilities. On September 19, 1942, she gave the address at the Los Angeles, California, launching ceremony for the Liberty ship , a ceremony in which Marian Anderson christened the ship.
Impact on Daytona Beach community In the early 1900s, Daytona Beach did not contain a hospital that would take in Black people, no matter the situation. Bethune had the idea to start a hospital after one of her students got appendicitis and was initially refused treatment at the local hospital. Bethune convinced the doctors to treat her student and left determined to open a hospital.Robertson 2015, pp. 29–30.