Mary McLeod Bethune

"I leave you to love. I leave you to hope. I leave you the challenge of developing confidence in one another. I leave you a thirst for education. I leave you a respect for the use of power. I leave your faith. I leave you racial dignity. I leave you a desire to live harmoniously with your fellow men. I leave you a responsibility to our young people.”

Mary Jane McLeod Bethune (born Mary Jane McLeod; July 10, 1875 – May 18, 1955) was an American educator, stateswoman, philanthropist, humanitarian, womanist, and civil rights activist.

McLeod was born in 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. Most of her siblings had been born into slavery. Her mother worked for her former master, and her father farmed cotton near a large house they called "The Homestead."

Her parents wanted to be independent, so they had sacrificed to buy a farm for the family. As a child, Mary would accompany her mother to deliver "white people's" wash. Allowed to go into the white children's nursery, Mary became fascinated with their toys. One day she picked up a book, and as she opened it, a white child snatched it away from her, babbling she did not know how to read. Mary decided then that the only difference between white and coloured people was the ability to read and write. She was inspired to learn.

McLeod attended Mayesville's one-room black schoolhouse, Trinity Mission School, which was run by the Presbyterian Board of Missions of Freedmen. She was the only child in her family to attend school, so she taught her family what she had learned each day. To get to and from school, Mary walked five miles each day. Her teacher Emma Jane Wilson 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, which she did from 1888–1893. The following year, she attended Dwight L. Moody's Institute for Home and Foreign Missions in Chicago, hoping to become a missionary in Africa. Told that black missionaries were not needed, she planned to teach, as education was a prime goal among African Americans.

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"I believe that the greatest hope for the development of my race lies in training our women thoroughly and practically." 

Bethune worked as a teacher briefly at her former elementary 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. As the daughter of former slaves, Laney ran her school with a Christian missionary zeal, emphasizing character and practical education for girls. She also accepted the boys 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. Bethune spoke very highly of Laney and aimed to emulate her in her own teaching pursuits.

Thus, Bethune adopted many of Laney's educational philosophies, including her emphasis on educating girls and women to improve the conditions of black people. This is still a firm belief today – that educating women elevates the lives of families as a whole.

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.

In 1898, McLeod married Albertus Bethune and they moved to Savannah, Georgia, where she did social work until they moved to Florida. They had one son, Albert. Coyden Harold Uggams, a visiting Presbyterian minister, persuaded the couple to relocate to Palatka, Florida to run a mission school, which they did in 1899. As well as running the school, Mary began an outreach programme for prisoners.

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"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."

After her marriage and move to Florida, which was seen to have better economic opportunity, Bethune became determined to start a school for girls.

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 used $1.50 to start the Educational and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls. She initially had six students—five girls aged six to twelve, and her son Albert. The school bordered Daytona's dump. Bethune, parents of students, and church members raised money by making sweet potato pies, ice cream, and fried fish and selling them to crews at the dump.

In the early days, the students made ink for pens from elderberry juice and pencils from burned wood; they asked local businesses for furniture. The school received donations of money, equipment, and labour from local black churches. Within a year, Bethune was teaching more than 30 girls at the school.Bethune also courted wealthy white organizations and invited influential white men to sit on her school board of trustees.

The rigorous curriculum had the girls rise at 5:30 a.m. for Bible study. The classes in home economics and industrial skills such as dressmaking, millinery, cooking, and other crafts emphasized a life of self-sufficiency for them as women. Students' days ended at 9 pm. Soon Bethune added science and business courses, then high school-level math, English, and foreign languages. Bethune was always seeking donations. A donation of $62,000 by John D. Rockefeller helped, as did her friendship with Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife, who gave her entree to a progressive network.

In 1907, Albertus abandoned his wife and son and fled to South Carolina, where he died in 1918. Thus, Mary was left as a black single mother – an unenviable position at the time.

After making the school's library accessible to the public, it became Florida's first free library accessible to Black Floridians.

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In the early 1900s, Daytona Beach, Florida, lacked a hospital that would help people of colour. Bethune had the idea to start a hospital after an incident involving one of her students. She was called to the bedside of a young female student who fell ill with acute appendicitis and clearly needed immediate medical attention. Nevertheless, there was no local hospital to take her to that would treat black people. Bethune demanded that the white physician at the local hospital help the girl. When Bethune went to visit her student, she was asked to enter through the back door. At the hospital, she found that her student had been neglected, ill-cared for, and segregated on an outdoor porch.

Out of this experience, Bethune decided that the black community in Daytona needed a hospital. She found a cabin near the school, and through sponsors helping her raise money, she purchased it for five thousand dollars. In 1911, Bethune opened the first black hospital in Daytona, Florida. It started with two beds and, within a few years, held twenty. Both white and black physicians worked at the hospital, along with Bethune's student nurses. This hospital went on to save many black lives within the twenty years that it operated. During that time, both black and white people in the community relied on help from the McLeod hospital. After an explosion at a nearby construction site, the hospital took in injured black workers. The hospital and its nurses were also praised for their efforts with a 1918 influenza outbreak. During this outbreak, the hospital was full and had to overflow into the school's auditorium. In 1931, Daytona's public hospital, Halifax, agreed to open a separate hospital for people of colour. Black people would not fully integrate into the public hospital's main location until the 1960s.

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After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, which enacted women's suffrage, Bethune continued her efforts to help Blacks gain access to the polls. She solicited donations to help Black voters pay poll taxes, provided tutoring for voter registration literacy tests at Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute, and planned mass voter registration drives.

In 1896, the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) was formed to promote the needs of black women. Bethune served as the Florida chapter president of the NACW from 1917 to 1925. She worked to register black voters, which was resisted by white society and had been made almost impossible by various obstacles in Florida law and practices controlled by white administrators. She was threatened by members of the resurgent Ku Klux Klan in those years.^[ Bethune also served as the president of the Southeastern Federation of Colored Women's Clubs from 1920 to 1925, which worked to improve opportunities for black women.

She was elected as national president of the NACW in 1924. While the organization struggled to raise funds for regular operations, Bethune envisioned acquiring a headquarters and hiring a professional executive secretary; she implemented this when NACW bought a property at 1318 Vermont Avenue in Washington, DC. She led it to be the first black-controlled organization with headquarters in the capital.

Gaining a national reputation, in 1928, Bethune was invited to attend the Child Welfare Conference called by Republican President Calvin Coolidge. In 1930 President Herbert Hoover appointed her to the White House Conference on Child Health.

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“It is our pledge to make a lasting contribution to all that is finest and best in America, to cherish and enrich her heritage of freedom and progress by working for the integration of all her people regardless of race, creed, or national origin, into her spiritual, social, cultural, civic, and economic life, and thus aid her to achieve the glorious destiny of a true and unfettered democracy.^”

The Southeastern Federation of Colored Women's Clubs  elected Bethune as president after its first conference in 1920. They intended to reach out to Southern Women (specifically white women) for support and unity in gaining rights for black women. The women met in Memphis to discuss interracial problems. In many respects, all of the women agreed about what needed to be changed until they came to the topic of suffrage. The white women at the conference tried to strike down a resolution on black suffrage. The SFCWC responded by issuing a pamphlet entitled Southern Negro Women and Race Co-Operation; it delineated their demands regarding conditions in domestic service, child welfare, conditions of travel, education, lynching, the public press, and voting rights. The group went on to help register black women to vote after they were granted suffrage a few months later after the passage of the constitutional amendment. Within the state, however, and in other southern states, black men and women were largely disenfranchised by discriminatory application of literacy and comprehension tests, as well as requirements to pay poll taxes, lengthy residency requirements, and the need to keep and display records.

In 1935 Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) in New York City, bringing together representatives of 28 different organizations to work to improve the lives of black women and their communities. Bethune said of the council:

In 1938, the NCNW hosted the White House Conference on Negro Women and Children, demonstrating the importance of black women in democratic roles. During World War II, the NCNW gained approval for black women to be commissioned as officers in the Women's Army Corps. Bethune also served as a political appointee and the Special Assistant to the Secretary of War during the war.

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“No one can do what Bethune can do.”

The National Youth Administration (NYA) was a federal agency created under Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration (WPA). It provided programs specifically to promote relief and employment for young people. It focused on unemployed citizens aged sixteen to twenty-five years who were not in school. Bethune lobbied the organization so aggressively and effectively for minority involvement that she earned a full-time staff position in 1936 as an assistant.

Within two years, Bethune was appointed to Director of the Division of Negro Affairs, and became the first African-American female division head. She managed NYA funds to help black students through school-based programs. She was the only black agent of the NYA who was a financial manager. She ensured black colleges participating in the Civilian Pilot Training Program, which graduated some of the first black pilots.

Bethune's determination helped national officials recognize the need to improve employment for black youth and helped more than 300,000 black young men and women gain work.

Within the administration, Bethune advocated for the appointment of black NYA officials to positions of political power. Bethune's administrative assistants served as liaisons between the National Division of Negro Affairs and the NYA agencies on the state and local levels. The high number of administrative assistants composed a workforce commanded by Bethune. They helped gain a better job and salary opportunities for blacks across the country. During her tenure, Bethune also pushed federal officials to approve a program of consumer education for blacks and a foundation for black disabled children. She planned for studies for black workers' education councils. National officials did not support these due to inadequate funding and fear of duplicating the work of private, non-governmental agencies. The NYA was terminated in 1943.

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“If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves. We should, therefore, protest openly everything ... that smacks of discrimination or slander.”

Bethune became a close and loyal friend of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt. At the Southern Conference on Human Welfare in 1938, held in Alabama, Eleanor Roosevelt requested a seat next to Bethune despite state segregation laws. Roosevelt frequently referred to Bethune as "her closest friend in her age group." Bethune told black voters about the work being done on their behalf by the Roosevelt Administration and made their concerns known to the Roosevelts. She had unprecedented access to the White House through her relationship with the First Lady.

She used her access to form a coalition of leaders from black organizations called the Federal Council of Negro Affairs, but which came to be known as the Black Cabinet. It served as an advisory board to the Roosevelt administration on issues facing black people in America. It was composed of numerous talented blacks, mostly men, who had been appointed to positions in federal agencies. This was the first collective of black people working in higher positions in government. It suggested to voters that the Roosevelt administration cared about black concerns. The group gathered in Bethune's office or apartment and met informally, rarely keeping minutes. Although as advisers they did not directly create public policy, they were a respected leadership among black voters; they influenced political appointments and disbursement of funds to organizations that would benefit black people.

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“If our people are to fight their way up out of bondage we must arm them with the sword and the shield and buckler of pride – belief in themselves and their possibilities, based upon a sure knowledge of the achievements of the past.^”  

In 1931, the [Methodist Church] helped the merger of her school with the boys' Cookman Institute, forming the Bethune-Cookman College, a coeducational junior college of which Bethune became president. Through the Great Depression, Bethune-Cookman School continued to operate and met the educational standards of the State of Florida. From 1936 to 1942, Bethune had to cut back her time as president because of her duties in Washington, DC. 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.

Bethune became a member of the Methodist Church, but it was segregated in the South. While she worked to integrate the mostly white Methodist Episcopal Church, she protested its initial plans for integration because they proposed separate jurisdictions based on race.

Bethune worked to educate both whites and blacks about the accomplishments and needs of black people. On Sundays, she opened her school to tourists in Daytona Beach, showing off her students' accomplishments, hosting national speakers on black issues, and taking donations. She ensured that these Community Meetings were integrated. A black teenager in Daytona at the time later recalled: "Many tourists attended, sitting wherever there were empty seats.”

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“There can be no divided democracy, no class government, no half-free county, under the constitution. Therefore, there can be no discrimination, no segregation, no separation of some citizens from the rights which belong to all…We are on our way. But these are frontiers which we must conquer. ... We must gain full equality in education ... in the franchise ... in economic opportunity, and full equality in the abundance of life.^”

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional, Bethune defended the decision by writing the above quote in the Chicago Defender.

Bethune organized the first officer candidate schools for black women. She lobbied federal officials, including Roosevelt, on behalf of African-American women who wanted to join the military.

In April 1944, she co-founded the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) with William J. Trent and Frederick D. Patterson. The UNCF is a program which gives many different scholarships, mentorships, and job opportunities to African American and minority students attending any of the 37 historically black colleges and universities. Trent had joined Patterson and Bethune in raising money for UNCF. The organization started in 1944 and by 1964, Trent had raised over 50 million.

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“She had the most marvelous gift of effecting feminine helplessness in order to attain her aims with masculine ruthlessness."

Bethune carried a cane, not for support but for effect. She said it gave her "swank". She was a teetotaler and preached temperance for African Americans, taking opportunities to chastise drunken blacks she encountered in public.

Bethune said more than once that the school and the students in Daytona were her first family and that her son and extended family came second. Her students often referred to her as "Mama Bethune".

When a white Daytona resident threatened Bethune's students with a rifle, Bethune worked to make an ally of him. The director of the McLeod Hospital recalled, "Mrs. Bethune treated him with courtesy and developed such goodwill in him that we found him protecting the children and going so far as to say, 'If anybody bothers old Mary, I will protect her with my life.'"

Self-sufficiency was a high priority throughout her life. Bethune invested in several businesses, including the Pittsburgh Courier, a black newspaper, and many life insurance companies. She founded Central Life Insurance of Florida. She eventually retired in Florida. Due to state segregation, blacks were not allowed to visit the beach. Bethune and several other business owners invested in Paradise Beach: they purchased a 2-mile (3.2 km) stretch of beach and the surrounding properties, selling these to black families. They did allow white families to visit the waterfront. Paradise Beach was later renamed as Bethune-Volusia Beach in her honor. She also was a one-fourth owner of the Welricha Motel in Daytona.

In the 1940s, Bethune used her influence and friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt to secure luxury travel buses for Eddie Durham's All-Star Girls Orchestra, an African-American all women's swing band.

Bethune was the only black woman present at the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945, representing the NAACP. In 1949 she became the first woman to receive the National Order of Honour and Merit, Haiti's highest award. She served as the US emissary to the induction of President William V.S. Tubman of Liberia in 1949

She also served as an adviser to five of the presidents of the United States. Among her honours, she was an assistant director of the Women's Army Corps. She was also an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.

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“Not only the Negro child but children of all races should read and know of the achievements, accomplishments, and deeds of the Negro. World peace and brotherhood are based on a common understanding of the contributions and cultures of all races and creeds.”

On May 18, 1955, Bethune died of a heart attack. Her death was followed by editorial tributes in African-American newspapers across the United States. The Oklahoma City Black Dispatch stated she was "Exhibit No. 1 for all who have faith in America and the democratic process." The Atlanta Daily World said her life was "One of the most dramatic careers ever enacted at any time upon the stage of human activity." The Pittsburgh Courier wrote, "In any race or nation she would have been an outstanding personality and made a noteworthy contribution because her chief attribute was her indomitable soul."

The mainstream press praised her as well. Christian Century suggested, "the story of her life should be taught to every school child for generations to come." The New York Times noted she was "one of the most potent factors in the growth of interracial goodwill in America." The Washington Post said: "So great were her dynamism and force that it was almost impossible to resist her ... Not only her own people, but all America has been enriched and ennobled by her courageous, ebullient spirit." Her hometown newspaper, the Daytona Beach Evening News printed, "To some, she seemed unreal, something that could not be. ... What right had she to greatness? ... The lesson of Mrs. Bethune's life is that genius knows no racial barriers."

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“Next to God we are indebted to women, first for life itself, and then for making it worth living.”

On July 10, 1974, the anniversary of her 99th birthday, the Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial, by artist Robert Berks, was erected in her honor in Lincoln Park (Washington, D.C.)^[64] It was the first monument honoring an African American or a woman to be installed in a public park in the District of Columbia. At least 18,000 people attended the unveiling ceremony, including Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman elected to Congress. The funds for the monument were raised by the National Council of Negro Women. The inscription on the pedestal reads "let her works praise her" (a biblical reference to Proverbs 31:31), while the side is engraved with a passage from her "Last Will and Testament" (quoted in the first post).

Schools have been named in her honour across the USA. In 2004, Bethune-Cookman University celebrated its hundredth anniversary from its founding as a primary school. The university's website says, "the vision of the founder remains in full view over one-hundred years later. The institution prevails in order that others might improve their heads, hearts, and hands." The university's vice president recalled her legacy: "During Mrs. Bethune's time, this was the only place in the city of Daytona Beach where Whites and Blacks could sit in the same room and enjoy what she called 'gems from students'—their recitations and songs. This is a person who was able to bring Black people and White together."

The Mary McLeod Bethune Scholarship Program is named in her honor for Floridian students wishing to attend historically black colleges and universities within the state.