Mary McLeod Bethune

Mary McLeod Bethune , 1875-1955, American educator, b. Mayesville, S.C., grad. Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, 1895. The 17th child of former slaves, she taught (1895-1903) in a series of southern mission schools before settling in Florida to found (1904) the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls. From 1904 to 1942 and again from 1946 to 1947, she served as president of the institute, which, after merging with Cookman Institute (1923), became Bethune-Cookman College. A leader in the American black community, she founded the National Council of Negro Women (1935) and was director (1936-44) of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration. In addition, she served as special adviser on minority affairs to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. At the 1945 conference that organized the United Nations, she was a consultant on interracial understanding.

Bibliography: See biography by R. Holt (1964).

Bethune, Mary McLeod (1875–1955), school founder, government administrator, leader of African American women.Born in Mayesville, South Carolina, and educated at a Presbyterian school in North Carolina and Chicago's Moody Bible Institute, Bethune in 1904 founded the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for girls in Florida; she was its president until 1942. Merged with Cookman Institute in 1923, it was subsequently known as Bethune‐Cookman College—the only extant historically black college founded by a black woman. In 1935, she founded the National Council of Negro Women, which united the major black women's organizations, including the National Association of Colored Women, of which she had been president (1924–1928). She was also active in several interracial civil rights organizations.

Bethune's service on the advisory committee of the New Deal's National Youth Administration (1936–1943) extended her influence, particularly after she became director of its Negro Affairs Division in 1939. Her access to the White House and her alliance with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt facilitated her efforts to bring more black men and women into New Deal agencies and to combat racial discrimination in federal social welfare programs. Organizing the blacks in New Deal agencies into the Federal Council of Negro Affairs in 1936, she initiated two government‐sponsored National Negro Conferences (1937 and 1939), which delineated the plight of African Americans and offered policy recommendations. In 1949, Bethune retired to Daytona Beach to live with her son, Albert, born in 1899 during her marriage (1898–1909) to Albertus Bethune.
See also New Deal Era, The.

Bibliography

B. Joyce Ross , Mary McLeod Bethune and the National Youth Administration: A Case Study of Power Relationships in the Black Cabinet of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Journal of Negro History (Jan. 1975): 1–28.
Elaine M. Smith , Mary McLeod Bethune and the National Youth Administration, in Clio Was a Woman: Studies in the History of American Women, ed. Mabel E. Deutrich and Virginia C. Purdy, 1980.

Paula Giddings

Bethune, Mary McLeod (b. 10 July 1875, d. 18 May 1955). US civil rights activist Born at Myseville, South Carolina, she was an early feminist and African American activist who studied at Scotia College and the Moody Bible Institute. She founded a female teaching academy in 1904 at the age of 29, which became Bethune-Cookman College (Florida), nineteen years later. She chaired the National Association of Colored Women in 1926 and, between 1935 and 1949, the National Council of Negro Women. She was a prominent federal administrator for youth under the New Deal Youth Administration and was close to Eleanor Roosevelt.