Mary Jane McLeod Bethune

Mary Jane McLeod was born on 10 July 1875 of two former slaves, near Maysville, South Carolina. She worked in the cotton fields but had a strong desire to learn. She became a prize student of teacher, Emma Jane Wilson, who recommended her for a scholarship to Scotia Seminary in North Carolina. After graduating she received a scholarship to Moody's Institute for Home and Foreign Missions in Chicago. She wanted to go to Africa to minister, but was told there were no openings. She taught first with her old teacher, then at the Haines Institute in Augusta, Georgia, and later at the Kendall Institute in South Carolina.

After marrying, she and her husband, Albertus Bethune, went to live in Savannah, Georgia. While there she met the Rev. C.J. Uggans, a Presbyterian pastor from Palatka, Florida, who gave her a chance to open a school. The Palatka Mission School was in operation from 1899-1903. In addition to teaching, she took her mission work into the jails two or three times a week, to sawmills, and to young people in clubs.

In 1904 the Rev. S.P. Pratt encouraged Mrs. Bethune to go to Daytona as he felt it would suit her missionary spirit. There she founded the Daytona Normal and Industrial School for Negro Girls. In later years it became known nationwide as Bethune - Cookman College (B-CC), after she merged her school with Cookman Institute as a private college. She remained president of that school until 1942, earning a national and international reputation as an educator, public figure in government, black woman's club leader, and businesswoman.

During this period, Mrs. Bethune led a drive to register black voters in Daytona Beach, which earned her a visit from the local Ku Klux Klan. Most importantly, Mrs. Bethune was elected president of the State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, which she served for four years. She was able to organize scattered groups state wide to work towards common goals.

There was a sign at her school that expressed her feelings: "Enter to Learn - Leave to Serve." She lived those words, serving under four United States Presidents. In 1928 she attended the Child Welfare Conference called by President Calvin Coolidge. During President Herbert Hoover's administration, she was summoned once again to Washington to attend the National Commission for Child Welfare. She also served on the Hoover Commission on Home Building and Home Ownership. She became a close friend of Sara Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed her to help with the Nation Youth Administration (NYA). She also served as director of the Division of Negro Affairs and became the first black woman to serve as head of a federal agency.

As early as 1942, she lobbied the US War Department to commission black women officers in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), later the Women's Army Corps (WAC). In 1944, she became the National Commander of the Women's Army for National Defense - an all black women's group. At this time she was working for not only wartime, but also national peace issues.

On 25 April 1945, W.E.B. DuBois, Walter White, and Mrs. Bethune were sent to San Francisco by President Harry S. Truman as consultants to the organizing meeting of the United Nations. Although disappointed in the way those meetings went, Mrs. Bethune was not put off. In 1949 President Truman once more called upon her, this time to represent the United States Government at the inauguration of the President of Liberia. She was to finally realize her life dream to go to Africa, not as a missionary, but as a representative for her nation.

Mary McLeod Bethune died 18 May 1955. Ebony magazine published Mrs. Bethune's "Last Will and Testament" after her death. In it she said she doubted she would live to see the greatest of her dreams realized - "full equality for the Negro in our time." She didn't have many worldly possessions but she said, " If I have a legacy to leave my people, it is my philosophy of living and serving……..I pray now that my philosophy may be helpful to those who share my vision of a world of Peace, Progress, Brotherhood, and love."

Sources:

http://www.bethune.cookman.edu/Welcome/Founder/founder.html

http://www.donegal.k12.pa.us/dms/Kif/42/summaryb.html

http://www.donegal.k12.pa.us/dms/Kif/42/summaryb.html