Mary jane mcleod bethune death

Educator, entrepreneur, political activist, community leader, single mother: Mary Jane McLeod Bethune committed her life to improving education and opportunity for black Americans, particularly women, in the United States.

She was born into Jim Crow America, a period of violence and segregation targeted at black Americans in the South following the Civil War. It continued throughout Bethune’s lifetime and she fought tirelessly against it. This devotion to securing integration and equality for black lives would eventually stretch beyond the borders of her county, state and nation.

So, who was Mary Jane McLeod Bethune, and what exactly is she remembered for?

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Mary Jane McLeod was born on 10 July 1875 in a small cabin near Mayesville, South Carolina. She was the 15th of Samuel and Patsy McLeod’s 17 children, and unlike her parents and all but one of her siblings, Bethune was born free of slavery.

Patsy continued working for her former owner after the Civil War while Samuel farmed cotton. However, the McLeods were eventually able to buy their own farm and by age 9 Bethune could pick 250 pounds of cotton a day.

Born free and encouraged by her deeply religious parents, Bethune soon left the fields to attend Maysville School, a Presbyterian Mission School for African Americans. She was the only McLeod child to go to school and walked 5 miles each day to and from classes.

But it was while studying on a hard-won scholarship at Scotia Seminary for Girls that Bethune recognised the autonomy education gave women. As she prepared to leave study, Bethune resolved she would become a Christian missionary in Africa.

Yet with her experience of learning among the black population of South Carolina, Bethune reconciled there was enough need for he

American educator and civil rights leader (1875–1955)

For other people named Mary Bethune, see Mary Bethune (disambiguation).

Mary Jane McLeod Bethune (née McLeod; July 10, 1875 – May 18, 1955) was an American educator, philanthropist, humanitarian, womanist, and civil rights activist. Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women in 1935, established the organization's flagship journal Aframerican Women's Journal, and presided over myriad African-American women's organizations including the National Association for Colored Women and the National Youth Administration's Negro Division.

She started a private school for African-American students which later became Bethune-Cookman University. She was the sole African American woman officially a part of the US delegation that created the United Nations charter, and she held a leadership position for the American Women's Voluntary Services founded by Alice Throckmorton McLean. Bethune wrote prolifically, publishing in several periodicals from 1924 to 1955.

After working on the presidential campaign for Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, she was appointed as a national advisor and worked with Roosevelt to create the Federal Council on Colored Affairs, also known as the Black Cabinet. Honors include the designation of her home in Daytona Beach as a National Historic Landmark and a 1974 statue as "the first monument to honor an African American and a woman in a public park in Washington, D.C."^[5&

The daughter of formerly enslaved parents, Mary Jane McLeod Bethune became one of the most important Black educators, civil and women’s rights leaders and government officials of the twentieth century. The college she founded set educational standards for today’s Black colleges, and her role as an advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave African Americans an advocate in government.

Born on July 10, 1875 near Maysville, South Carolina, Bethune was one of the last of Samuel and Patsy McLeod’s seventeen children. After the Civil War, her mother worked for her former owner until she could buy the land on which the family grew cotton. By age nine, Bethune could pick 250 pounds of cotton a day.

Bethune benefited from efforts to educate African Americans after the war, graduating in 1894 from the Scotia Seminary, a boarding school in North Carolina. Bethune next attended Dwight Moody’s Institute for Home and Foreign Missions in Chicago, Illinois. But with no church willing to sponsor her as a missionary, Bethune became an educator. While teaching in South Carolina, she married fellow teacher Albertus Bethune, with whom she had a son in 1899.

The Bethunes moved to Palatka, Florida, where Mary worked at the Presbyterian Church and also sold insurance. In 1904, her marriage ended, and determined to support her son, Bethune opened a boarding school, the Daytona Beach Literary and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls. Eventually, Bethune’s school became a college, merging with the all-male Cookman Institute to form Bethune-Cookman College in 1929. It issued its first degrees in 1943.

A champion of racial and gender equality, Bethune founded many organizations and led voter registration drives after women gained the vote in 1920, risking racist attacks. In 1924, she was elected president of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, and in 1935, she became the founding president of the National Council of Negro Women. Bethune also played a rol