Mary McLeod Bethune

Mary Jane McLeod was born on July 10, 1875, in a small log cabin near Mayesville, South Carolina, on a rice and cotton farm in Sumter County. She was the fifteenth of seventeen children born to Sam and Patsy (née McIntosh) McLeod, both former slaves. Patsy McLeod worked after emancipation for her former owner, earning enough to buy five acres (2.0 ha) from him. There, Sam and their sons built the log cabin in which McLeod was born. McLeod grew up hearing stories from her maternal grandmother, Sophie, about resistance to slavery, and both Sophie and Patsy told McLeod that she was special. McLeod credited them both with inspiring her work toward equality.

McLeod recalled noticing racial inequality as a child, observing that the Black community had access to less material wealth and opportunity. She particularly remembered visiting the home of the Wilson's—the family that had enslaved her mother—where she explored a play house while Patsy worked. McLeod picked up a book, and one of the Wilson girls admonished her with "Put down that book, you can't read." McLeod later cited the incident as contributing to her desire for literacy and education.

When she was twelve, McLeod saw a white mob attack and nearly hang a Black man. The man had refused to blow a match out for a White man and then had shoved him to the ground. As McLeod watched, the mob nearly hung the Black man, stopped at the last moment by the sheriff. McLeod recalled later learning about both the terrifying effects of white violence and the value of allying with some white people, those she called "calm men of authority".

In October 1886, McLeod began attending Mayesville's one-room Black schoolhouse, Trinity Mission School, which was run by the Presbyterian Board of Missions of Freedmen and founded by Emma Jane Wilson. The school was five miles (8.0 km) from her home, and she walked there and back. Not all her siblings attended, so she taught her family what she had learned each day. In addition to founding the school, Wilson was McLeod's teacher, and became a significant mentor in her life.

Wilson had attended Scotia Seminary (now Barber–Scotia College). She helped McLeod attend the same school on a scholarship, which McLeod did from 1888 to 1894. She attended Dwight L. Moody's Institute for Home and Foreign Missions in Chicago (now the Moody Bible Institute) from 1894 to 1895. McLeod applied to be a missionary with the Presbyterian Board of Missions, with the goal of becoming a missionary in Africa. Although her request was denied, McLeod found a new use for the skills she had learned by teaching at Haines Institute in Augusta, Georgia.

Teaching career

School in Daytona

After getting married and moving to Florida, Bethune became determined to start a school for girls. Bethune moved from Palatka to Daytona because it had more economic opportunity; it had become a popular tourist destination, and businesses were thriving. In October 1904, she rented a small house for $11.00 per month. She made benches and desks from discarded crates and acquired other items through charity. Bethune started the Educational and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls in 1904. She initially had six students—five girls and her son Albert. At this stage, tuition was 50 cents. The school bordered Daytona's dump. She raised money by selling homemade sweet potato pies and ice cream to crews of local workers, gathering enough to purchase additional dump land. She hired workers to build the brick building Faith Hall, paying them in part with free tuition. By 1918, Faith Hall was completed along with an additional two-story building and an auditorium. Later, McLeod had another building constructed further from the campus to educate boys who came to the school.

In the early days of her school, the students made ink for pens from elderberry juice and pencils from burned wood; they asked local businesses for furniture. Bethune wrote later, "I considered cash money as the smallest part of my resources. I had faith in a loving God, faith in myself, and a desire to serve." The school received donations of money, equipment, and labor from local Black churches. Within a year, Bethune was teaching more than 30 girls at the school. After two years of operation, 250 girls were enrolled.

Bethune also courted wealthy White organizations, such as the ladies' Palmetto Club. She invited influential White men to sit on her school board of trustees, gaining participation by James Gamble (of Procter & Gamble), Ransom Eli Olds (of Oldsmobile and REO MotorCompany) and Thomas H. White (of White Sewing Machines). When Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Institute visited in 1912, he advised her of the importance of gaining support from white benefactors for funding, suggesting a few ways of doing so.

The rigorous curriculum had the girls rise at 5:30 a.m. for Bible study. Some of the classes in their schedules contained, in home economics and industrial skills such as dressmaking, millinery, cooking, and other crafts emphasized a life of self-sufficiency. Students' days ended at 9 p.m. Soon Bethune added science and business courses, then high school-level math, English, and foreign languages. Bethune always sought donations to keep her school operating, and would extend offers to wealthy white philanthropists to sit on the board in order to gain favor with them. Bethune also used her skills as a baker in order to raise money. Her friendship with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt assisted her in making connections. One of Bethune's more generous donors was John D. Rockefeller, who reportedly provided a donation of $62,000.

Beginning in 1923, Daytona School merged with the coeducational Cookman Institute; run by the Methodist church, the institute was the first Black college in Florida. Bethune became president, at a time when Black women rarely headed colleges. The merger completed in 1925 and formed Daytona Cookman Collegiate Institute, a coeducational junior college. Through the Great Depression, the school, renamed Bethune-Cookman College in 1931, continued to operate and met the educational standards of the State of Florida. Throughout the 1930s, Bethune and civil rights advocate Blake R. Van Leer worked with fellow Florida institutions to lobby for federal funding.

From 1936 to 1942, Bethune had to cut back her time as president because of her duties in Washington, D.C. Funding declined during this period of her absence. Nevertheless, by 1941, the college had developed a four-year curriculum and achieved full college status. By 1942, Bethune gave up the presidency, as her health was adversely affected by her many responsibilities. On September 19, 1942, she gave the address at the Los Angeles, California, launching ceremony for the Liberty ship Booker T. Washington, a ceremony in which Marian Anderson christened the ship.

Marriage and family

McLeod married Albertus Bethune in 1898. The Bethunes moved to Savannah, Georgia, where she did social work until they moved to Florida. They had a son named Albert McLeod Bethune Sr. A visiting Presbyterian minister, Coyden Harold Uggams, persuaded the couple to relocate to Palatka, Florida, to run a mission school. The Bethunes moved in 1899; Mary ran the mission school and began an outreach to prisoners. Albertus left the family in 1907 and relocated to South Carolina. The couple never divorced, and Albertus died in 1918 from tuberculosis.

Bethune carried a cane for effect, rather than mobility support, stating that it gave her "swank". She was a teetotaler and preached temperance for Black Americans, chastising Blacks who were intoxicated publicly. Bethune claimed that the students and teachers in Daytona were her first family. Her students often referred to her as "Mother Bethune".

She was noted for achieving her goals. Robert Weaver, who also served in Roosevelt's Black Cabinet, said of her, "She had the most marvelous gift of effecting feminine helplessness in order to attain her aims with masculine ruthlessness." When a White Daytona resident threatened Bethune's students with a rifle, Bethune worked to make an ally of him. The director of the McLeod Hospital recalled, "Mrs. Bethune treated him with courtesy and developed such goodwill in him that we found him protecting the children and going so far as to say, 'If anybody bothers old Mary, I will protect her with my life.'"

She prioritized self-sufficiency throughout her life. Bethune invested in several businesses, including the Pittsburgh Courier, a Black newspaper, and many life insurance companies. She also founded Central Life Insurance Company of Florida, and later retired in Florida. Due to state segregation, Blacks were not allowed to visit the beach. Bethune and several other business owners responded by investing in and purchasing Paradise Beach, a 2-mile (3.2 km) stretch of beach and the surrounding properties and then selling them to Black families. They also allowed White families to visit the waterfront. Eventually, Paradise Beach was named Bethune-Volusia Beach in her honor. She held 25% ownership of the Welricha Motel in Daytona.

Foundations with Lucy Craft Laney

Bethune worked as a teacher briefly at her former school in Sumter County. In 1896, she began teaching at Haines Normal and Industrial Institute in Augusta, Georgia, which was part of a Presbyterian mission organized by northern congregations. It was founded and run by Lucy Craft Laney, who was a Christian missionary and the daughter of former slaves. Laney ran her school with a Christian missionary zeal, emphasizing character and practical education for boys and girls who showed up eager to learn. Laney's mission was to imbue Christian moral education in her students to arm them for their life challenges. Of her year at Laney's school, Bethune said:

I was so impressed with her fearlessness, her amazing touch in every respect, an energy that seemed inexhaustible and her mighty power to command respect and admiration from her students and all who knew her. She handled her domain with the art of a master.

Bethune adopted many of Laney's educational philosophies, including her emphasis on educating girls and women to improve the conditions of Black people; Bethune's approach added a focus on political activism. After one year at Haines, Bethune was transferred by the Presbyterian mission to the Kindell Institute in Sumter, South Carolina, where she met her husband.

Suffrage activism

Mary McLeod Bethune joined the Equal Suffrage League, which was an organization branched off of The National Association of Colored Women in 1912. She was an advocate for voting equality, and though she could not yet vote, she was determined to change that for those in her community. After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, which enacted women's suffrage, Bethune continued her efforts to help Black people gain access to the polls. She solicited donations to help Black voters pay poll taxes, a fee voters paid to be eligible to cast their vote that was created to discriminate against Black Americans. She also provided tutoring for voter registration literacy tests, another discriminatory practice limiting Black Americans' ability to vote. This took place at her school, Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute. Finally, she planned and executed mass voter registration drives.