Known as the "First Lady of the Struggle," Mary Jane McLeod Bethune has left her mark indelibly printed upon the walls of time as an outstanding educator, a giant of race relations, and advisor to U.S presidents. Bethune was the first Black woman in the U.S to establish a school that became a four-year accredited college. The daughter of formerly enslaved parents, Mary Jane McLeod was born July 10, 1875, on a plantation farm near Mayesville, South Carolina. Her parents were owned by different masters. Before their marriage her father Samuel had to work to "buy" his bride. Unlike her parents and all but two of her siblings, Mary was born free. They had a Bible in the home, but on one could read it. As a child, Mary expressed an interest in learning to read and write. The cotton farm which they had managed to acquire in the early 1870s was only about 35 acres in extent which, for such a large family, meant a constant struggle to maintain a subsistence income. As a result, all the children grew up spending much of their time helping in various tasks around the farm.
She was the first and only one in her family of 17 children (that's right, 17 children!) to attend school, and she made the most of it. In October 1886, when Mary was about eleven, the Mission Board of the Presbyterian Church opened a school for African-American children, called the Trinity Mission School. The school was just a shack and she had to walk five miles to get there, but she didn't miss a day. Not all her siblings attended, so she taught her family what she had learned each day. After a year she could proudly read the Bible and poetry to her family. When she began to learn numbers, she realized that her daddy and other uneducated farmers were being cheated when they sold their rice and cotton. When the master told them their cotton only weighed 400 pounds, they didn't know he was lying to them. She spoke up and her father was treated more fairly. Now that she could read and figure, their neighbors came to her for help.
After completing her education at the Trinity Mission School, Bethune received a scholarship to attend the Scotia Seminary in 1888 (now Barber-Scotia College), a school for girls in Concord, North Carolina. Mary Chrissman, a wealthy Quaker schoolteacher and dressmaker, originally from Denver, Colorado, provided sufficient funds for one Black child to attend Scotia Seminary. The year was 1887 and Mary Jane was 12 years old. She went away to school and she wouldn't see her parents again for seven years. The hall where she would be living was a mansion. She never dreamed she would live in such a place. She felt so alone and frightened. Mary had to work to help pay for her expenses, but she was happy working in the kitchen and cleaning the mansion. Scotia Seminary provided a sound secondary education in a variety of artistic and domestic subjects. In the six years she spent there, Mary excelled in music and public speaking.
After graduating in 1893, she enrolled at what is now Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, intending to become a missionary to Africa. She graduated from the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago in 1895. While teaching and working among South Carolina Blacks, however, she realized that “Africans in America needed Christ and school just as much as Negroes in Africa… My life work lay not in Africa but in my own country.” Mary was the only Black student there, and one of only a few non-Whites. She was working toward becoming a missionary in Africa. After one year of study and graduation, she applied to the Missionary Society for a placement overseas. In what she later referred to as the "biggest disappointment of her life," she was told that the Society considered her too young for such a situation. Moreover, Bethune was also informed that, as an African American, she could not be placed in any position of authority as a missionary.
So instead, she returned to her home in Mayesville and within a few days was teaching in Miss Emma Wilson's school. This was where she belonged. She taught there for a year and then was sent to work in a school in Augusta, Georgia. There she learned how to run a school from Miss Lucy Laney, the school's founder, as education was a prime goal among Black people. While there, Bethune became convinced that education was the most powerful tool African-American women could employ to improve their socioeconomic and political positions. Bethune left the Institute to take up a more senior and demanding teaching position at the Kendall Institute located in Sumter, South Carolina. With her salary she bought a house for her aging parents. The house even had running water.
Mary's next stop was Sumter, South Carolina, where she taught for two years at Kendall Institute. A friend introduced her to Albertus Bethune. He fell in love with her immediately and Mary began to love him too. She took him to meet her parents. They were married in 1898, and she took the name Mrs. Mary McLeod Bethune. She kept her maiden name to honor her father. Mary and Albertus marriage was not a happy. one. The couple had one son, Albert McLeod Bethune. Shortly after the birth of their son, Albertus was offered a minor teaching position in Savannah, Georgia, and, when they moved, Mary was forced to give up her job at the Kendall Institute. She soon decided that, if faced with a choice between her marriage or her career, the latter would take precedence. After only a few weeks in Savannah, she accepted a job at a missionary school in Palatka, Florida. Her husband was not in favor of it, but he soon joined her.
With her young infant in arms, Bethune left her husband. Their marriage lasted about eight years, because Albertus deserted the family in 1907 and relocated to South Carolina but they remained married until his death in 1918. Mary ran the mission school and began an outreach to prisoners. She tried to help the prisoners in any way she could, and worked to free those who were not guilty. Because money was tight, Mary supplemented the family income by selling life insurance. In 1900, she established her own presbyterian parochial school in Palatka. From the beginning, this school was plagued with financial difficulties and, despite all her efforts. She still had dreams of building her own school. Four years after arriving in Palatka, she heard of a great need in Daytona, Florida. Mary saw an opportunity in this growing community. When Mary arrived in Daytona Florida, she was deeply distressed by the plight of children of Black railroad workers.
Almost penniless, she was sheltered by a local woman recommended by the minister, who helped her find the house that she would use to open a school for Black girls. This was her dream, and she worked to make it come true. In the dream she saw Booker T. Washington riding up on a horse. He handed her a huge diamond. In 1904, with the ever-present desire to educate others and $1.50, she founded a school for girls in Daytona Beach, Florida. Her student body consisted of her four-year old son, and five little girls, who each paid 50 cents a week tuition. The girls worked with minimal supplies. Sticks of charcoal were used as pencils and she boiled berries to make ink. Tuition was 50 cents a week. She raised funds, by selling homemade sweet potato pies and ice cream to crews of local workers.
Bethune, who had always had a talent for music, organized her pupils into a choir which raised money by giving concerts throughout Florida. She then began a series of lecture tours in order to explain the educational principles upon which the Daytona Institute was founded. These concerts and tours were initially supported by local Black churches, but quickly drew the attention of the White community as well. Within a year, Bethune was teaching more than 100 girls at the school. The school grew to more 250 students (which now included boys), over the next two years. She believed that education provided the key to racial advancement. Mary McLeod Bethune focused the school on educating girls, who had few other opportunities for education. At first, the school focused on elementary classes, and later secondary courses. While first stressing industrial training and religious instruction, gradually the school moved to more academic subjects. Bethune added depth to the curriculum by introducing a wide variety of new courses. She was one of the first in the area to organize summer schools.
Bethune worked not only to maintain the school, but she also fought aggressively the segregation and inequality facing Blacks. There was objection from many at that time to the education of Black children, but Bethune's zeal and dedication won over many skeptics of both races. She encouraged people to "Invest in the human soul. Who knows, it might be a diamond in the rough." She had immense faith in God and believed that nothing was impossible. Bethune always sought donations to keep her school operating; as she traveled, she was fundraising. A donation of $62,000 by John D. Rockefeller helped, as did her friendship with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, who gave her entry to a progressive network. The school was supported in part by Whites, including northerners with summer homes in the area, and such industrialists as James M. Gamble chair of the Proctor and Gamble Manufacturing Company.
Although not all members of the community were happy with Bethune's success. Eventhough the Ku Klux Klan had a chapter in Daytona, many Black families continued to moved to the area in search of jobs. She was occasionally threatened its members. Bethune was flexible in her approach to new problems; thus, when fresh needs arose, she was able to respond in a practical fashion. In 1911, after the school added nursing classes, Bethune also opened a hospital, in the original building where she had started the school, in what became known as the McLeod Hospital. Students could not train or work at the local, Whites-only, hospital. During World War I, she was elected president of the Florida Federation of Colored Women's Clubs and directed the membership to support various types of war work. Similarly, she acted as a lecturer for the Red Cross and became co-founder of the Circle of Negro War Relief for New York City.
Her school became an accredited high school and two-year college. By this time the Daytona Institute had over 300 pupils and a staff of 25. There was a working farm called The Retreat that helped the school survive financially. A woman named Flora Curtis bought vegetables at the farm. Over the years she spent about $20. She appreciated the kindness shown to her by the students. When she died they learned she had willed the school $80,000. Later a dormitory was named for her just as another building on campus had been named for Mr. White. In 1923 Bethune arranged for the school's affiliation with the Methodist Episcopal Church. Its burgeoning reputation made it possible to organize a merger with the Cookman Institute, for Men, run by the Methodist church, then in Jacksonville, Florida. Within a few years, the newly named Bethune-Cookman College had become one of the leading junior colleges in the United States. This merger effectively relieved Bethune of any further worries since her partners were able to provide needed technical services and further financial assistance.
The school, which had begun with a handful of students, grew to a peak of 1,000 students and won full accreditation -- in 1939 as a junior college and in 1941 as a four-year college. Bethune remained president of the college until 1942 and again from 1946 to 1947. She was, at the time, one of the few female college presidents in the nation. F. Bethune remained president of the college until 1942 and again from 1946 to 1947. In 1924, Mary McLeod Mary McLeod Bethune was elected president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), which was founded by Josephine St. Pierre-Ruffin in 1896. At that time the highest national office a Black woman could aspire. During her term, the organization bought a Washington, D.C. building as a national headquarters, promoted better communication between members, and brought the organization into affiliation with the larger and more powerful, though White-run, National Council of Women.
Bethune tried to steer it beyond traditional self-help and moral uplift toward the politics of agitation for integration by attacking racial discrimination and segregation in the Federal government. Under her guidance, the NACW attempted to forge an activist role for Black women in international affairs. Bethune sought, she said, to "make this national body of colored women a significant link between the peoples of color throughout the world". But she was also involved in other organizations, extending her interest in opportunities for young African Americans. Bethune spoke frankly during the 1920s against Jim Crow, saying, “The South has definitely committed itself to the task of keeping the Negro in his place… To keep [Negroes] inferior they must be huddled in segregated ghettos without drainage, light, pavement, or modern sanitary convenience. They must be denied justice and the right to make a decent living.” 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 and served on the Hoover Commission on Home Building and Home Ownership. Bethune did not confine her efforts on behalf of African Americans to government-sponsored programs. She was outspoken in her support for civil rights and actively supported efforts to end lynching and the poll tax. In addition, she picketed Washington businesses that refused to hire African Americans, demonstrated on behalf of the Scottsboro Boys and southern tenant farmers, and was a regular speaker at numerous conferences devoted to racial issues. Mary McLeod Bethune was active in the Methodist Episcopal Church. She was a delegate from 1928 to 1944 to the general conference held every four years. She opposed the merger of the northern and southern conferences, because the southern conference segregated African American members.
By the mid-1930s, Bethune's increasingly prominent public role brought her into contact with Eleanor Roosevelt, who was also deeply interested in interracial issues and the problems of youth. The two women soon became close. Bethune also used her personal friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt to advance the Black cause. One of her most notable contribution occurred in 1935 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt called her to Washington. He had asked Bethune to serve as a Special Advisor to the National Youth Administration. He was so impressed with her work that the following year, he created her own department within the agency and appointed her its director. Between 1936 and 1944 Bethune was director of Negro Affairs in the NYA and chair of an informal Federal Council on Negro Affairs, the "Black Cabinet" or "Black Brain Trust", federally appointed Black officials who met regularly to plan strategy and set Black priorities for social change.
In 1935, Mary McLeod Bethune brought together Black women from many different organizations founding the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), to take on the major national issues affecting the Black population, especially women. She served as its president from 1935 to 1949. That same year Mary McLeod Bethune was awarded the prestigious Spingarn Medal for educational services and for her efforts to advance the political causes of minorities, (the second African-American woman to receive this award, the first being Mary Burnett Talbert). Bethune focused the organization’s activities against segregation and discrimination toward Black women, on cultivating better international relations, and on national liberal causes. She established national headquarters in Washington, D.C., chapters in major cities, employed a full-time staff, and published the Aframerican Women’s Journal.
Using her clout as a top-ranking Black administrator in the Roosevelt administration, Bethune lobbied for African American concerns and was instrumental in seeing that African Americans received help from the federal government. In addition, Bethune found time to serve as president of the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools, and vice-president of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. She played a key role in establishing, in 1936, the Federal Committee on Fair Employment Practice, to help reduce discrimination or even exclusion of African Americans by the growing defense industry. During World War II, Bethune served as special assistant to the secretary of war and assistant director of the Women's Army Corps. In that capacity she organized the first women's officer candidate schools and lobbied federal officials, including Franklin Roosevelt, on behalf of African American women who wanted to join the military.
Bethune pushed for and secured the inclusion of Black schools in key federal programs championed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration, including one that paved the way for the Tuskegee Airmen. The path for those iconic Black pilots began with Bethune’s prodding FDR to include Black colleges and universities in the new Civilian Pilot Training program, an initiative designed to improve the nation’s readiness for war. In 1942, her actions culminated in a pivotal step in the integration of the United States military at a time when the southern wing of FDR’s own party was openly and virulently segregationist. She was the vice president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1940 to 1955.
Ill health forced Bethune to give up the presidency of Bethune-Cookman College in 1942, though she remained president emeritus until her death. In 1949, President Harry S. Truman appointed her to lead the U.S delegation to Liberia to observe the inauguration of that African country’s president. President Truman appointed her as a delegate and advisor on interracial relations at the San Francisco Conference, which led to the organization of the United Nations and writing of the United Nations Charter. Bethune was instrumental in integrating the Red Cross, increasing public awareness of lynching, voter discrimination in federal elections, and segregation on interstate trains and buses. She resigned as NCNW president in 1949, retiring to her home at The Retreat. Until her death from a heart attack in 1955 Bethune remained the most influential African American woman in the United States, continuing her struggle for equal rights.
Knowing death was imminent, Bethune wrote “My Last Will and Testament” for Ebony magazine, laying out the principles by which she had led her life. She said, “If I have a legacy to leave my people, it is my philosophy of living and serving”. Miss Bethune provided a unique perspective on life during the 19th and 20th centuries, and highlighted the positive outcomes of a life dedicated to socially responsible individualism and her school’s motto of “Enter to learn. Depart to serve.” She lived long enough to see the U.S Supreme Court strike down school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education. When President Roosevelt died during 1945 she was asked to speak at the memorial service in Washington, D.C., as representative of all of America's minority groups. At the end of the service, Eleanor Roosevelt presented Bethune with her late husband's cane as a mark of the respect and esteem in which he had held her. From the cotton fields of South Carolina, to advising presidents, Mary Jane McLeod Bethune rose to become one of the most prominent figures in African American history.