Mary McLeod Bethune, “The First Lady of the Struggle.”
She was the preeminent female African American civil rights leader in the 1930s-50s.
Written by shift7, published here with permission.
“You and I must fight as never before to make our government realize the ideals upon which it was founded…It is our obligation now to do it for the world.” — Mary McLeod Bethune, 1947¹
In a black and white photo that has survived more than 80 years, twenty African Americans stand in two rows on the steps of an ornate building. The year was 1938. They are a group of prominent African American leaders who advised President Roosevelt throughout his presidency on issues affecting African Americans.² In the photograph, nineteen individuals are men. In the middle of the front row, a lone woman: Mary McLeod Bethune.
Mary was born in Mayesville, South Carolina in 1875, 12.5 years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.³ Her parents Samuel and Patsy McIntosh McLeod had been enslaved, as had most of her sixteen siblings when they were born. Mary was the fifteenth of the seventeen children, and became the only member of her family to receive a formal education.
As a young girl, she walked five miles each way to get to Trinity Presbyterian Mission School in Mayesville.⁴ She dreamed of becoming a missionary in Africa. “Impressed by Mary’s determination,” the founder of the school, Emma Wilson, awarded her a scholarship sponsored by a teacher from Colorado named Mary Crissman.⁵ With these funds, at age 12, Mary attended Scotia Seminary for girls (now Barber-Scotia College⁶) in Concord, North Carolina.⁷ She obtained her high school degree in July 1894. Mary Crissman continued to finance Mary’s education, next at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.⁸
During her time at the Institute, Mary applied to the Presbyterian Board of Mission to become a missionary. She was rejected by letter. Seven weeks later she sent them a reply. It began with:
“Dear Friends: — Your letter of Dec. 18th 1894 has been before me for sometime [sic]. I have prayed over that letter time and time again asking the Holy Spirit to give me only out of that letter what you intended me to have. I think I have been rather unfortunate in getting out of it what I have. Indeed, friends and co-workers for the Lord Jesus Christ, I have not been aware of the fact that you have not been sending out Colored Missionaries to Africa or I would not have attempted an exception to your rules. It seems to me that if the Lord Jesus Christ were here on earth in person and wanted someone to go on an errand for Him, He would not discuss the covering He has placed upon the bodies of His blood-bought people to protect the flesh He has made. As I sit here at my table writing you I can see my Saviour struggling with that heavy cross up Calvary’s Mount, I am told that a man attempted to help my blessed Saviour bear the cross! I wonder did the Lord Jesus Christ stop to see whether that man was white or ‘colored’.”⁹
Mary studied for one year at Moody Bible Institute, and then returned to Mayesville, SC and taught in her former school briefly.¹⁰ Around the end of 1895, she moved to Augusta, Georgia to teach at Haines Normal and Industrial Institute, “inspired by the founder and principal of the school, Lucy Laney’s commitment to serving others.”¹¹ From 1897–98, she taught at Kindell Institute in Sumter, South Carolina, where she met Albertus Bethune. They married in 1898 and had a son, Albert, a year later. The family moved to Savannah, Georgia briefly, and then to Palatka, Florida, where Mary established and taught at the Palatka Mission School from 1899–1903. Mary later said, “I went there because I was looking for a hard place to work.”¹²
Mary understood the power of education. Kevin Bryant, Park Guide at the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House in Washington, D.C., explained, “She knew that she became who she was because of education. She knew that thousands — hundreds of thousands — of youth just like her were yearning for education.” Creating equal opportunity for education for African Americans would become a central focus in her life’s work to advance civil rights.
In 1904, upon hearing that many African Americans were moving to the east coast of Florida due to the promise of “economic prosperity” associated with a new railroad line, Mary figured there would be a need for schools there.¹³ The family relocated to Daytona Beach where Mary quickly founded the “Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls.”¹⁴
She later wrote in her essay, “Faith That Moved a Dump Heap”:
“I would leave my son with relatives or with his father, who was not altogether sympathetic. He would chide me: ‘You are foolish to make sacrifices and build for nothing. Why not stop chasing around and stay put in a good job?’ Common sense whispered he was right. But I was inspired by the noble life and work of Booker T. Washington, whose writings had become a second bible to me and now urged me on. […]
I found a shabby four-room cottage, for which the owner wanted a rental of eleven dollars a month. My total capital was a dollar and a half, but I talked him into trusting me until the end of the month for the rest. This was in September. A friend let me stay at her home, and I plunged into the job of creating something from nothing.”
The school opened on October 3, 1904 with five students aged 8–12, including her son. At the opening, she stated, “This is a new kind of school. I am going to teach my girls crafts and homemaking. I am going to teach them to earn a living. They will be trained in head, hand and heart: Their heads to think, their hands to work and their hearts to have faith.”¹⁵
She gathered furniture, equipment and supplies from the community, and “burned logs and used the charred splinters as pencils, and mashed elderberries for ink.”¹⁶ Parents started to leave their children overnight, and Mary gathered corn sacks and stuffed them with Spanish moss to make mattresses.
Mary further wrote, “The school expanded fast. In less than two years I had 250 pupils. In desperation I hired a large hall next to my original little cottage and used it as a combined dormitory and classroom. I focused more and more on girls, as I felt that they especially were hampered by lack of educational opportunities.”¹⁷
She eventually raised the funds to buy land nearby and construct her own school building, in part by selling desserts and organizing concerts, but also by appealing to wealthy individuals for donations: “I did my best missionary work among the prominent winter visitors to Florida. I would pick out names of ‘newly arrived guests,’ from the newspapers, and write letters asking whether I could call. One of these letters went to James N. Gamble, of Procter & Gamble. He invited me to call at noon the next day.”¹⁸
James Gamble, and later Thomas H. White, owner of White Sewing Machine Company, provided significant support for the school.¹⁹ “Gamble became the chairman of the school’s first board of trustees, bought a house for Bethune, and White, on his death seven years later, left a large trust fund for the school,” reported the South Florida Sun Sentinel newspaper.²⁰
In 1911, one of Mary’s students was struck with appendicitis, which can be life threatening. Mary took the girl to the only local hospital, which was unwilling to treat African Americans, and persuaded them to treat her. The next day, when Mary returned, she “was taken to the back of the hospital where the young girl was recuperating on a screened porch.” Infuriated, Mary decided to create the first hospital in Daytona Beach for the African American community.²¹ She led fundraising efforts to buy a small building near her school for $5,000: “Most of the first $4,000 was raised by students. The final $1,000 came from steel baron Andrew Carnegie.”²² The hospital project also came to include a nurses’ training school.²³ Mary named it McLeod Hospital and Nurses Training School in memory of her mother, Patsy McLeod.²⁴
In 1912, Booker T. Washington came to Daytona Beach as part of a week-long educational campaign in Florida. Mary gave him a tour of her all-girls school campus. His visit was catalytic for her, as a “point of pride,” and because he shared advice on how to fundraise from philanthropists.²⁵
Around this time, Mary became involved with the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), particularly in light of its focus on improving education for women. The organization also focused on civil rights including women’s suffrage. She served as the Florida chapter president from 1917 to 1925. Beginning in 1920, she also organized and led the Southeastern Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, an affiliate of NACW,²⁶ which united state club federations from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Virginia.²⁷
Women gained the right to vote in 1920 with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, and it included women of color. However, in U.S. southern states, “restrictive state or local laws called for poll taxes and/or literacy tests before a citizen could vote.”²⁸ Mary raised money to assist families to pay the poll taxes, and held evening reading classes at her school. The night before a Daytona mayoral election, members of the Ku Klux Klan “marched around the school in their hoods and robes carrying torches and threatening to burn down the school.”²⁹ In response, Mary told them she would “rebuild, rebuild, and rebuild again.”³⁰ She and some of her students and a groundskeeper “held an all-night school-front vigil,” and the Klan backed down. In the morning, Mary led a procession of 100 African Americans to the polls to vote.³¹
Mary dreamt of being able to offer college education.³² In 1923, she made the strategic decision to merge her school with a co-educational Methodist school for African Americans in Jacksonville, Florida called Cookman Institute.³³ Mary’s school campus became the Daytona-Cookman Collegiate Institute (renamed in 1929 to Bethune-Cookman College and to Bethune-Cookman University in 2007).³⁴ Mary served as President of the new institution — she “was the first African American woman to found and head such an institution in the United States.” Eleven years later, John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil, would provide a grant of $62,000 for Bethune-Cookman College.³⁵
In 1924, in recognition of Mary’s impactful leadership of the Florida chapter of NACW and the Southeastern Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, she was elected the eighth national president of NACW.³⁶ She served in this role for four years.³⁷
After ending her term as President of NACW, Mary began to explore the creation of a new umbrella organization to “provide an unprecedented base of power for black women.” She organized an initial meeting in December 1929 in Daytona Beach for “the heads of all national black women’s organizations,” and thereafter continued to hold planning meetings for six years.³⁸ In December 1935, the “founding meeting” for the organization, called the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), was held in New York City with fourteen organizations participating. Mary Church Terrell, who was one of the co-founders of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), and Mary F. Waring, who was president of NACW at the time, attended this meeting to argue against the founding of the NCNW. Terrell said, “I do not see how the mistakes made by other groups will not be made by this one.”³⁹
NCNW proceeded, with Mary McLeod Bethune as its president until 1949. During this time, the membership grew to 800,000 people,⁴⁰ as the organization “fought for equal opportunities and living improvements for African Americans, particularly African American women, in all aspects of American society.”⁴¹ In 1943, Mary established a national headquarters in Washington, D.C., in which she occupied one room on the 2nd floor as her residence, allocated the rest of the 2nd floor rooms to serve as offices, and made the 3rd floor “an inclusive safe space” where women could stay, as described by Kevin Bryant, Park Guide for the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House. This building, located in Logan Circle, remained the location of NCNW national headquarters until 1966, as “the setting for countless meetings in which NCNW members discussed pivotal national events…[and] created and implemented programs to combat discrimination in housing, healthcare, and employment.”⁴² Today it is a National Historic Site. The National Archives for African American Women’s History used to be in the carriage house at this location. It was relocated to Landover, MD for better preservation over several years from 1966 into the 1970s. The NCNW offices are now located on Pennsylvania Ave., NW in Washington, D.C.
Let’s go back in time a bit now, to explore Mary’s rise to leadership positions in the U.S. government, to which she was appointed during the time she was also leading NCNW, and serving as president of Bethune-Cookman College.
In 1927, Mary had attended a luncheon hosted by Eleanor Roosevelt in New York, which began a close friendship between the two women.⁴³ Mary “brought lists of requests for ER’s intervention when the two met and often sent reports, novels and other reading material to ER’s attention,” and Eleanor Roosevelt “often called Bethune her ‘closest friend in her own age group.’”
According to Mary McLeod Bethune Council House, this friendship also led to opportunities for Mary to meet with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1935, Mary was hired as Special Advisor to President Roosevelt on Minority Affairs, and then in 1936 she was appointed Director of Division of Negro Affairs in the National Youth Administration (NYA), making her the first African American woman administrator in the federal government. The NYA was a New Deal program created in 1935 within the Works Progress Administration (WPA) “to provide economic relief to young people aged 16 to 24 through educational aid, job training skills, and employment opportunities.”⁴⁴ In this position, Mary “worked closely with federal and state agencies, black college presidents, and black businesses and organizations to establish numerous resources to aid black girls and women.”⁴⁵
In her essay “Faith that Moved a Dump Heap,” Mary wrote about her appointment as Director of Division of Negro Affairs in the NYA:
“My main task now is to supervise the training provided for 600,000 Negro children, and I have to run the college by remote control. Every few weeks, however, I snatch a day or so and return to my beloved home. This is a strenuous program. The doctor shakes his head and says, “Mrs. Bethune, slow down a little. Relax! Take it just a little easier.” I promise to reform, but in an hour the promise is forgotten. For I am my mother’s daughter, and the drums of African skill beat in my heart. They will not let me rest while there is a single Negro boy or girl without a chance to prove his worth.”⁴⁶
In 1936, Mary and other African American leaders formed Roosevelt’s “Black Cabinet” (a term she coined), but none serving in official cabinet level positions.⁴⁷ In fact, America would not see a African American member of the President’s Cabinet until Lyndon Johnson appointed Robert C. Weaver the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in 1966.⁴⁸
In the early 1940s, many of the New Deal programs began closing down, as the Great Depression was easing, in part because World War II had been providing economic stimulus in the U.S. The NYA would close in 1943. During Mary’s time in the NYA, she had built a reputation in the capital “as a powerful figure in the fight for African American and women’s rights.”⁴⁹ As a result, in 1942, she was appointed to serve as Special Assistant to the Secretary of War for the selection of candidates for Officer Training School for the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC)⁵⁰. In this position, as described by Kevin Bryant of the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House, Mary spoke out against segregation in armed forces, and pressured the Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES) — the organization that oversaw how women volunteered and were commissioned for war — to be more inclusive. As a result, the inaugural class of 436 women included 36 African American women, selected by Mary — some personally recruited by her.⁵¹ She participated in troop reviews with various generals. She remained in this role until the war ended in 1945.
In 1940, Mary became Vice President of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1945, in this role, she participated in the United Nations Conference on International Organization which contributed to the creation of the UN Charter.⁵² She served as Vice President of the NAACP for the rest of her life.
In 1944, Mary co-founded the United Negro College Fund together with Frederick D. Patterson, who was president of the Tuskegee Institute at the time, and others.⁵³ Bethune-Cookman College became a charter member of the Fund.⁵⁴
In 1952, President Truman appointed Mary as Official Delegate to the second inauguration of the President of Liberia, William V.S. Tubman.⁵⁵
In 1953, she launched the Mary McLeod Bethune Foundation to preserve her papers and story, and willed her Daytona Beach home to it, to serve as the foundation’s headquarters and “a place to ‘awaken people and have them realize there is something in the world they can do.’”⁵⁶ This historic home was also later designated a National Historic Landmark, in 1974.
Mary passed away on May 18, 1955, in Florida, at the age of 79.⁵⁷
A memorial statue of Mary was placed in Lincoln Park in Washington DC on July 10, 1974, which would have been her 99th birthday. The Lincoln Emancipation memorial statue, 200 yards away from the Bethune statue, was turned to face her.⁵⁸
A postage stamp of her was issued in 1985.⁵⁹
Today, she is “an overlooked civil rights leader” said Kevin Bryant of the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House. “She was the preeminent female civil rights leader between the times of Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr., battling for freedom for all people in the midst of the Great Depression and two World Wars.”
“I leave you love. I leave you hope. I leave you the challenge of developing confidence in one another. I leave you a thirst for education. I leave you respect for the use of power. I leave you faith. I leave you racial dignity. I leave you a desire to live harmoniously with your fellow men. I leave you finally a responsibility to our young people.”⁶⁰ — Mary McLeod Bethune, 1955
Visit Mary’s life in person:
- Mayesville, South Carolina (birthplace)
- Bethune-Cooke University — Daytona Beach, Florida
- Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site — Washington, DC (open to the public and also home to the National Archives for Black Women’s History⁶¹)
- Mary McLeod Bethune Foundation
- Mary McLeod Bethune statue in Lincoln Park — Washington, DC
- National Council of Negro Women current headquarters — Washington DC
- National Archives for Black Women’s History: Original location at the Council House (1935–2014) and current location (2014-present)
Discover
- National Historic Site: Mary McLeod Bethune Council House (first headquarters of the NCNW)
- Mary McLeod Bethune — Resume — National Parks Service
- Mary McLeod Bethune Last Will & Testament
- United Negro College Fund co-founded in 1944 by Frederick Patterson, Mary McLeod Bethune, John D. Rockefeller II, and others.⁶²
- National Council of Negro Women (NCNW)
- Mary McLeod Bethune Archives at Bethune-Cookman University
Media needs to regularly represent the innovative work of diverse individuals and teams in an empowering manner in order to shift the public mindset to one that respects that there is innovation talent in all people, including in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics). Surfacing diverse talent will help empower current solution makers to learn or team up with colleagues who can create and use these tools, thereby accelerating progress on societal challenges.
