Mary McLeod Bethune

Mary McLeod Bethune (née McLeod; 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. 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. 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 (née McIntosh) McLeod, both former slaves. Patsy McLeod worked after emancipation for her former owner, earning enough to buy five acres (2.0 ha) from him. There, Sam and their sons built the log cabin in which McLeod was born. 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.

McLeod recalled noticing racial inequality as a child, observing that the Black community had access to less material wealth and opportunity. 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".

In October 1886, 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 five miles (8.0 km) 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, which McLeod did from 1888 to 1894. 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. 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. 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.