Mary McLeod Bethune

American educator and social reformer

• Born: July 10, 1875
• Birthplace: Mayesville, South Carolina
• Died: May 18, 1955
• Place of death: Daytona Beach, Florida

A leading voice and activist for democratic ideals before World War I and up to the early years of the Civil Rights movement, Bethune was instrumental in founding organizations to advance the education and rights of African Americans, inspiring others as she was herself inspired.

Early Life

Mary McLeod Bethune (meh-CLOWD bay-THYEWN) was born in Mayesville, South Carolina, to Sam and Patsy McLeod, who were former slaves. She was the seventeenth child to be born to the couple and the first to be born free. Her father was a farmer and her mother, Patsy, probably did laundry to supplement the family income in addition to her own work on the family farm. Many of the older McLeod children were either married or on their own, but the younger children assisted with the support of the family by picking cotton. By her own report, Bethune, at nine years of age, could pick 250 pounds of cotton a day.

One incident in particular is reputed to have inspired Bethune’s determination to become educated. While she was in a neighboring house being shown around by the white family’s young daughters, they happened into a room with books. Bethune picked up one of the books and was examining it when one of the girls spoke sharply to her about putting the book down, reportedly telling her “You can’t read, so you shouldn’t even handle a book!” Shocked at this response and perhaps vaguely aware of the insult, Bethune became determined to read. As it happened, a young black woman was in the neighborhood to start a school for black children. This teacher approached the McLeods about having Bethune attend. The likelihood of one of the children of this poor family being allowed to go to school seemed remote. Nevertheless, Bethune’s desire to go was so strong and apparently so heartfelt that her mother convinced her father to let her go. When she was able to read the Bible to her parents as a result of this schooling, they all, parents and child, came to appreciate the benefits of education.

Bethune did well at the little country school. Her teacher recommended her for further schooling, and her tuition was paid in part by Mary Chrissman, a white dressmaker from Denver, Colorado. The new school, known as Scotia School, was located in Concord, South Carolina. Bethune contributed to her education by doing odd jobs at the school. Having done well in her studies at Scotia, she was again recommended by her teachers for scholarships to continue her studies. She was accepted as a student at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois, and received additional financial support from Chrissman.

At the Moody Institute, Bethune became a member of the Gospel Choir Team that preached and sang throughout Illinois. She had hoped to become a missionary in Africa on completion of her studies, but because she was so young, she was not considered a suitable candidate. Instead, she took a teaching assignment at Haines Normal and Industrial Institute in Augusta, Georgia, where she met a black woman who was to affect her life in important ways: Lucy Laney, the school’s principal and founder and a trailblazer in the education of blacks. Sympathizing with Bethune’s compassion for the uneducated black children of the neighborhood around the school, Laney allowed Bethune to teach them on Sunday afternoons. Soon, Bethune had the children singing familiar songs, and she encouraged them to listen to Bible stories later.

The sponsoring Presbyterian Board of Haines Institute sent Bethune to other schools nearby. One of those schools was the Kendall Institute in Sumter, South Carolina. It was here that she met Albertus Bethune, also a teacher, whom she married in May of 1898. Their son, Albert McLeod Bethune, was born a year later. The family soon moved to Palatka, Florida, where Mary Bethune established a Presbyterian mission school. Her husband did not share her enthusiasm for missionary work, however, and the couple was eventually separated.

Life’s Work

Having been born in the South during Reconstruction undoubtedly saddled Bethune with many adversities. She was black, poor, and female, none of which made her more remarkable than other young women alive during the same period. What did distinguish her was her ability to conquer those misfortunes, to share her accomplishments with others, and to choose to devote her life to acts of service to others. From the time she read the Bible to her parents, she seemed to recognize and become inspired by the power of words and their effects on others.

Bethune’s lifework began in Daytona Beach when she saw other young black women in need of all varieties of education. Her ambition to provide a place for their schooling took the form of grasping at any possibilities, becoming inventive as the needs arose: discarded, crumpled paper could be smoothed out to write lessons on; burned wooden twigs could become charcoal for pencils; cracked plates or broken chairs anything that could be salvaged was recycled and returned to useful service. Her crowning achievement in these salvage operations was an area in the city that had been used as a garbage dump, but which she saw could be used for a school. Selflessness and determination proved to be the hallmarks of Bethune’s character. She had a dollar and a half as her original budget, but she made do and found creative ways to recruit both students and community assistance for her projects.

The years following the founding of the school with five students on October 3, 1904, led to the rapid growth of her program of education for blacks. By 1906, Bethune had 250 students and employed a few teachers who worked for salaries of fifteen to twenty-five dollars a month. To lessen the drain on the meager finances and to become more independent, she stopped renting and began to buy land for her needs. By 1925, Bethune School merged with the Cookman School for boys to become Bethune-Cookman College. The merged institution included a grade school, high school, and college. Because southern policies of segregation at the time extended to the care of hospital patients, Bethune was led to erect a hospital near the college in 1911 to provide better treatment for the black community. It was named for her father and proved to be another example of her vision.

During the years of the Wilson administration, Bethune became more active in social organizations devoted to protest and social reform. She served on the executive board of the Urban League as well as on committees resisting the discriminatory policies of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA). Since many of the positions taken by the YWCA were either condescending or blatantly biased, Bethune became one of several women opposing the racist stance of that association. She was also active in the formation of the National Association of Wage Earners, an organization dedicated to informing women of their rights as workers.

In 1921, Bethune was one of the executive leaders of the International Council of Women of the Darker Races of the World. The intention of this group was to raise the esteem and awareness of darker peoples about themselves and others from what has been called the Third World and what is best called the developing world.

She continued her activities on behalf of black children and women to combat the injustices and inequities they faced. Founding the National Association of Negro Women in 1935 and working with the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, Bethune directed the Negro branch of the National Youth Administration. She was also founder and president of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs.

Although she served as president of Bethune-Cookman College from 1904 to 1942 and was one of its trustees until her death in 1955, her influence was not exclusively focused on education. She was a special assistant to the secretary of war during World War II and served on the Committee for National Defense under President Harry S. Truman. She also served as a consultant to the conference that drafted the United Nations charter. These activities and her many honorary degrees and medals never caused her to abandon her main concern: the education of every black child.

Bethune’s imagination was not restricted to what she, or anyone, could see immediately. She was known to say “just because you can’t see a thing, does not mean that it does not exist.” During many of her talks, Bethune would frequently compare the peoples of the world to flowers. Some students would remark that there were no black flowers in the world’s gardens. At first, she had only her visionary remark to offer, since there appeared to be no way to rebut the observation. On one of her trips to Europe, however, she was presented with a “black” tulip by one of her hosts in the Netherlands. She later planted the tulips on her campus as proof of her maxim.

Bethune’s ability to maintain her lofty vision allowed her to endure in the face of great challenges. The black community was hard hit by the era’s wars, economic depressions, riots, and lynchings. For the most part, there was little government intervention on behalf of black victims. Protests by black organizations went unheard, were ignored, or were suppressed. The activities of racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan were accepted, permitted, or even encouraged while blacks were denied their civil rights despite their achievements as responsible citizens. Poverty and ignorance, combined with racism, did much to inhibit black people. None of these conditions could dampen Bethune’s spirit. Working with Eleanor Roosevelt and some of the nation’s top businesspeople, Bethune enhanced her effectiveness as a representative of the black community and as an individual educator. She died of a heart attack in 1955 and was buried on the campus of her beloved college.

Significance

During times when being an African American often meant being invisible, being disheartened, and being denied chances to achieve intellectually, especially if female, Bethune became a person whose entire life disproved such stereotypes. By white American standards, she possessed little physical beauty, but by any standards her spirit, her energy, and her compassion were evidence of great inner beauty. Bethune’s drive to give women access to worlds that had been closed to them, to give all blacks intellectual choices that had been denied them, and to give children an example to follow in providing service to others made her one of the most notable African American leaders of her time. Before her death, she had lived to see Bethune-Cookman become one of the finest of the historically black colleges in the country. She had left her mark on the administrations of two American presidents. Using her keen understanding of human behavior and harnessing her ability to negotiate change in the face of great opposition, Bethune became one of the most influential voices in the struggle for racial equality.

Bibliography

Bethune, Mary McLeod. Mary McLeod Bethune: Building a Better World Essays and Selected Documents. Edited by Audrey Thomas McCluskey and Elaine M. Smith. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Contains seventy of Bethune’s writings and other documents dating from 1902 through 1955.

Carruth, Ella Kaiser. She Wanted to Read: The Story of Mary McLeod Bethune. New York: Abingdon Press, 1966. A biography written for juveniles that presents a portrait of Bethune’s early years. Also includes some coverage of her involvement as a presidential adviser as well as her activities as an organizer and founder of groups concerned with women’s rights and labor relations.

Hanson, Joyce A. Mary McLeod Bethune and Black Women’s Political Activism. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003. Hanson examines Bethune’s political activism in the context of the activism of African American women in her time.

Lerner, Gerda, ed. Black Women in White America: A Documentary History. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972. Contains excerpts of works and speeches by notable black women including Bethune. Extremely useful for accurate firsthand accounts of her life and her activities in entries such as “A College from a Garbage Dump,” “Another Begging Letter,” and “A Century of Progress of Negro Women.”

McKissack, Patricia, and Fredrick McKissack. Mary McLeod Bethune: A Great Teacher. Hillside, N.J.: Enslow, 1991. Another biography directed at juvenile readers that provides an excellent introduction, broadly describing Bethune’s life and achievements in fighting bigotry and racial injustice. Focuses much of its attention on Bethune’s courage in overcoming adversity. Illustrated.

Salem, Dorothy. To Better Our World: Black Women in Organized Reform, 1890-1920. New York: Carlson, 1990. Salem’s work is the fourteenth volume in Carlson’s Black Women in United States History series. Provides a chronological narrative of the efforts made by black women’s organizations to improve the lives of African Americans in the United States. A well-researched historical account that provides insights into the backgrounds of black women reformers, highlighting their resiliency of character in the face of failures as well as successes.

Smith, Elaine M. “Mary McLeod Bethune and the National Youth Association.” In Clio Was a Woman: Studies in the History of American Women, edited by Mabel E. Deutrich and Virginia C. Purdy. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1980. An excellent assessment of Bethune’s work in supervising the activities of the National Youth Administration with respect to African Americans. Although aimed at a scholarly audience, this essay is accessible to general readers and helps place Bethune’s accomplishments within the context of her own time as well as the larger field of women’s studies.