Bethune, Mary McLeod (1875–1955)

One of America's most outstanding educators, as well as a major advocate of racial equality and civil rights. Pronunciation: Beth-OON. Born Mary McLeod on July 10, 1875, near Mayesville, South Carolina; died on May 18, 1955, in Daytona Beach, Florida; 15th child of Samuel McLeod (a farmer) and Patsy McIntosh; educated at Trinity Presbyterian Mission School for Negroes near Mayesville, South Carolina; Scotia Seminary, Concord, North Carolina; Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, Illinois; married Albertus Bethune, in 1898; children: one son, Albert (b. 1899).

On the afternoon of July 10, 1974, a crowd of over 20,000 gathered to witness the mayor of Washington, D.C., dedicate a monument in the city's Lincoln Park, the first statue in the capital to honor either an African-American or a woman. There was no doubt, however, that the individual it commemorated richly deserved the distinction: Mary Bethune was one of America's most outstanding educators and principled advocate of racial equality and civil rights.

She was born exactly 99 years earlier on a small farm near the town of Mayesville, South Carolina. Her parents, Samuel and Patsy McLeod (along with the elder of her 16 brothers and sisters), were ex-slaves who had gained their freedom following the victory of Northern forces in the Civil War. The cotton farm which they had managed to acquire in the early 1870s was only about 35 acres in extent which, for such a large family, meant a constant struggle to maintain a subsistence income. As a result, all the children grew up spending much of their time helping in various tasks around the farm. The senior McLeods were both strong Methodists and constantly emphasized to their children the importance of moral standards and the virtues of hard work.

In these economic circumstances, the children had little hope of any kind of formal, substantive education. Mary, however, was unique. From an early age, her parents recognized that

she was a particularly bright and inquisitive child. As such, they went to great lengths and made considerable sacrifices (both of themselves as well as their other children) to ensure that Bethune received a genuine education. Even so, she was almost 11 years old before her parents managed to save enough money to send her to the recently opened Trinity Presbyterian Mission School for Negroes. The school was located in Mayesville about five miles from their farm, a distance Bethune had to walk twice daily.

During Mary's three years at Trinity, her scholastic and intellectual talents blossomed, and she caught the attention of Emma Wilson , an energetic teacher who later went on to found the African-American Mission School. Determined that Bethune continue her education, Wilson contacted Mary Chrissman , a wealthy Quaker schoolteacher originally from Denver, Colorado, and persuaded her to act as Mary's financial patron. Chrissman provided sufficient funds for a scholarship to Scotia Seminary in Concord, North Carolina. Noted for its austere religious atmosphere, Scotia Seminary also provided a sound secondary education in a variety of artistic and domestic subjects. In the six years she spent there, Mary excelled in music and public speaking. She graduated in 1894.

Deeply influenced by her own Methodist background as well as the religious instruction received at Scotia, Bethune wished to serve as a missionary in Africa. To this end, she entered the interdenominational Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. After one year of study and graduation, she applied to the Missionary Society for a placement overseas. In what she later referred to as the "biggest disappointment of her life," she was told that the Society considered her too young for such a situation. Moreover, Bethune was also informed that, as a black, she could not be placed in any position of authority as a missionary.

Instead, she traveled to Augusta, Georgia, where she secured a position as teacher at Lucy Laney 's Haines Institute, founded by Laney and Bethune's close friend Emma Wilson. While there, Bethune became convinced that education was the most powerful tool African-American women could employ to improve their socioeconomic and political positions. Bethune left the Institute to take up a more senior and demanding teaching position at the Kendall Institute located in Sumter, South Carolina.

During this period, she had met Albertus Bethune then an employee at a Presbyterian parsonage. The couple were married in May 1898 and, in the following year, their son Albert, an only child, was born. Mary and Albertus were never particularly close, and their marriage was not happy. Shortly after the birth of their son, Albertus was offered a minor teaching position in Savannah, Georgia, and, when they moved, Bethune was forced to give up her job at the Kendall Institute. She soon decided that, if faced with a choice between her marriage or her career, the latter would take precedence. After only a few weeks in Savannah, she accepted a job at a missionary school in Palatka, Florida. With her young infant in arms, Bethune left her husband (although they remained legally married until Albertus' death in 1918) and set out to face her next challenge.

Bethune did not stay long at the missionary school. In 1900, she established her own presbyterian parochial school in Palatka. From the beginning, this school was plagued with financial difficulties and, despite all her efforts (including taking a part-time job selling life insurance), it was soon forced to close. A similar fate awaited another independent school she founded two years later. In 1904, Bethune visited Daytona Beach, Florida, where she was deeply distressed by the plight of children of African-American railroad workers. Desperately poor, these children had little or no opportunity to gain even the rudiments of a basic education. Bethune was determined to make another attempt to build a school that would address itself to their needs. By October of the same year, she founded what was eventually to become one of the most important and significant educational establishments in the American South, the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Girls.

As always, Bethune was faced by a lack of resources (she would later describe her total assets at this time as "a dollar and a half, and faith in God"). It is not surprising then that the Daytona Institute consisted of a rented cabin which was so small that initial enrollment had to be restricted to just five pupils (aged eight to twelve) as well as her own son. Bethune was determined, however, that this school would not go the way of her other efforts and fail through financial difficulties. She put her pupils to work part-time on an adjoining farm and, in this manner, was able to maintain a cash income and establish a regular, if often barely sufficient, source of food. While these measures were adequate to ensure the short-term durability of the school, Bethune realized that long-term survival would depend on its ability to grow and expand. To this end, she embarked on an ambitious and aggressive program of fund raising.

Bethune, who had always had a talent for music, organized her pupils into a choir which raised money by giving concerts throughout Florida. She then began a series of lecture tours in order to explain the educational principles upon which the Daytona Institute was founded. These concerts and tours were initially supported by local black churches (particularly the Mount Bethal Baptist Church under the guidance of Pastor A.L. James) but quickly drew the attention of the white community as well. In 1905, a Ladies' Advisory Board, consisting of socially prominent and well-off members of the Daytona district, was formed to suggest methods of raising funds. This board was subsequently able to attract a number of wealthy patrons, including John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil and James N. Gamble, chair of the Proctor and Gamble Manufacturing Company. Moreover, beyond material benefits, this board demonstrated to Bethune the possibilities inherent in genuine interracial cooperation. In her own words, it became a "crossroads of culture and human relations."

Although she was larger than life, her philosophy, her goals were all realistic.

—Walter Washington

Within two years, Bethune and her colleagues had raised enough money to purchase land and build new facilities while enrollment at the school expanded to some 250 pupils (which now included boys). Bethune added depth to the curriculum by introducing a wide variety of new courses. In addition, she was one of the first in the area to organize summer schools. She also strongly encouraged her pupils to participate in outreach programs and community projects in the vicinity. Although not all members of the community were happy with Bethune's success (she was, for instance, occasionally threatened by members of the Ku Klux Klan), the school prospered.

Bethune was flexible in her approach to new problems; thus, when fresh needs arose, she was able to respond in a practical fashion. In 1911, she was one of the prime movers in organizing what became known as the McLeod Hospital. This institution, the first of its kind in the South, was founded when white-owned-and-managed hospitals refused to provide training facilities for African-American physicians and nurses.

Bethune did not, however, confine herself to the field of education. During World War I, she was elected president of the Florida Federation of Colored Women's Clubs and directed the membership to support various types of war work. Similarly, she acted as a lecturer for the Red Cross and became co-founder of the Circle of Negro War Relief for New York City.

Her interests continued to expand in the postwar years. In 1920, she encouraged the Florida clubwomen to found a home for delinquent girls in Ocala which provided support and training until such time as they could re-enter the community. At the same time, she served on the executive board of the Southeastern Association of Colored Women and as vice-president of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. Bethune was a founder and executive member of the National Association of Wage Earners and of the International Council of Women of the Darker Races of the World.

Perhaps Bethune's greatest educational triumph came in 1923 by which time the Daytona Institute had over 300 pupils and a staff of 25. Its burgeoning reputation made it possible to organize a merger with the Cookman Institute, a co-educational college located in Jacksonville, Florida. Cookman was a Methodist college which, over the previous 50 years, had managed to create its own distinguished name. This merger effectively relieved Bethune of any further worries since her partners were able to provide needed technical services and further financial assistance. Within a few years, the newly named Bethune-Cookman College had become one of the leading junior colleges in the United States. It was for this achievement that Bethune would be awarded the prestigious Spingarn Medal for educational services in 1935 (the second African-American woman to receive this award).

Between 1924 and 1928, Bethune served two terms as president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) which at that time was the most important secular organization for black women. Under her guidance, the NACW attempted to forge an activist role for black women in international affairs. Bethune sought, she said, to "make this national body of colored women a significant link between the peoples of color throughout the world." Her role in the NACW was complemented in 1935 when she founded the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) for which she served as president for 14 years. The NCNW acted as an umbrella organization coordinating the activities of a wide variety of African-American women's groups, pressuring the national political system for reforms in the areas of public housing, social security, welfare, and anti-discrimination legislation.

By the mid-1930s, Bethune's increasingly prominent public role brought her into contact with Eleanor Roosevelt , who was also deeply interested in interracial issues and the problems of youth. The two women soon became close, and it was thanks to this friendship that Bethune gained access to the president. Franklin D. Roosevelt's most important initiative in these years was a social and economic program that was known as the New Deal. From 1936, Bethune served as the director of Minority Affairs in the New Deal's National Youth Administration, an organization set up in the previous year to assist young people. In 1939, she became director of the Division of Negro Affairs, at that time the most important appointment an African-American woman had ever held in U.S. government service. Bethune's job was to coordinate other black members of Roosevelt's administration. This, in turn, led to the formation of the Federal Council on Negro Affairs which produced a series of recommendations on civil liberties. These were distributed widely and had the effect of producing more black appointments in government as well as more federal intervention in racial issues.

In 1941, Bethune was a vocal supporter of A. Philip Randolph's March on Washington Movement which led to a presidential order banning racial discrimination in the federal government and in all defense industries. Moreover, following America's entry into World War II in December of the same year, Bethune was appointed a special assistant to the secretary of war and was responsible for the selection of the first females for officer-training schools. Thanks to Bethune's insistence, a fixed portion of the available places were formally reserved for African-American women. Finally, through her participation in the National Youth Administration programs and the Women's Interest Section of the War Department's Bureau of Public Relations, she was able to promote the employment of black youth and women in national defense plants from which they had previously been excluded.

Inevitably, the punishing schedule which Bethune set for herself began to have a serious effect on her health. For many years, she had suffered from chronic asthma which increasingly restricted her ability to travel. Following a particularly severe attack in 1942, Bethune formally relinquished the presidency of her beloved Bethune-Cookman College.

At the end of 1945, she represented the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) at the conference in San Francisco to write the inaugural charter for the United Nations. This conference was overshadowed by the death of President Roosevelt, and Bethune's attendance was interrupted when she was asked to speak at the memorial service in Washington, D.C., as representative of all of America's minority groups. At the end of the service, Eleanor Roosevelt presented Bethune with her late husband's cane as a mark of the respect and esteem in which he had held her.

On the occasion of her 75th birthday in 1950, Mary McLeod Bethune finally left public life and retired to her small home on the Bethune-Cookman campus. Even then, she maintained a strong interest in African-American affairs, establishing a black holiday resort (at Bethune-Volusia beach in Florida) and by creating the philanthropic Bethune Foundation. In January 1952, she was asked by the government to journey to Liberia in Africa as U.S. delegate at the inauguration of President William Tubman.

During her last years, Bethune's public service was rewarded by a number of official honors from various sources: the Thomas Jefferson Award (from the United States), the Medal of Honor and Merit (Haiti) and the Star of Africa (Liberia). These honors were overshadowed, however, by the U.S. Senate's McCarthy Commission which, without any evidence, smeared Bethune as a communist subversive. As a result, local authorities in Englewood, New Jersey, denied her the right to speak at a conference on civil rights. Shortly afterwards, on May 18, 1955, Bethune died of a heart attack.

Perhaps the best summation of the principles that guided Mary Bethune's life is that found in her own words written shortly before her death and which are carved on the pedestal of her monument in Washington, D.C. She wrote: "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."

sources:

Finkelstein, Louis. Thirteen Americans: Their Spiritual Autobiographies. NY: Harper, 1953.

Holt, Rackham. Mary McLeod Bethune. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964.

Lerner, Gerda. Black Women in White America. NY: Random House, 1973.

Peare, Catherine Owen. Mary McLeod Bethune. NY: Vanguard, 1951.

Sterne, Emma Gelders. Mary McLeod Bethune. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957.

suggested reading:

Deutrich, Mabel, and Virginia Purdy. Clio was a Woman: Studies in the History of American Women. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1980.

Smith, Elaine. Notable American Women: The Modern Period. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980.

collections:

The most significant collections of Mary Bethune's papers are held at the Bethune Foundation, Bethune-Cookman College; Armistad Research Center, New Orleans; the National Archives for Black Women's History, Washington, D.C.

Dave Baxter , Department of Philosophy, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada