Equal
parts educator, politician, and social visionary, Mary
McLeod
Bethune was one of the most prominent African American
women of the first half of the twentieth centuryand
one of the most powerful. Known as the "First Lady of
the Struggle,"
she devoted her career to improving the lives of African
Americans through education and political and economic
empowerment, first through the school she founded, Bethune-Cookman
College, later as president of the National
Council of Negro Women, and then as a top black administrator
in the Roosevelt administration.
Born the fifteenth of seventeen children to parents who
were former slaves, Mary Jane McLeod grew up in rural
South
Carolina and attended segregated mission schools. She initially
intended to become a missionary but turned to education
when the Presbyterian mission board rejected her application
to go to Africa. After marrying Albertus Bethune in 1898,
she moved to Florida where in 1904 she founded the Daytona
Educational and Industrial School for Negro Girls. In
1923,
the school merged with the all-male Cookman Institute of
Jacksonville and eventually became Bethune-Cookman College,
a four-year, coeducational institution. Bethune served
as the college's president until 1942 and again from 1946-47.
At the same time, Bethune also cemented her position as
a leader in African American education and the African
American
women's club movement by serving as president of state,
regional, and national organizations, including the National
Association of Colored Women. In 1935, she founded a more
politically oriented organization, the National Council
of Negro Women, a coalition of black women's organizations
focused on ending segregation and discrimination and cultivating
better international relationships. She served as its president
until 1949.
Between 1936 and 1944 Bethune was director of Negro Affairs
in the National Youth Administration
(NYA) and chair of an informal Black Cabinet, a group
of federally appointed black officials who met regularly
to plan strategy and set black priorities for social change.
Using her clout as a top-ranking African American administrator
in the Roosevelt administration, Bethune lobbied for African
American concerns and was instrumental in seeing that African
Americans received help from the federal government. Often
her efforts were unsuccessful her attempt to ensure
equal pay for African American federal workers was only
partially
successful, for example but she persisted and African
American youths were allowed to participate in NYA programs
in numbers proportional to the number of African Americans
in the national population.
Bethune did not confine her efforts on behalf of African
Americans to government-sponsored programs. She was outspoken
in her support for civil rights and actively supported
efforts to end lynching and the poll tax. In addition,
she picketed
Washington businesses that refused to hire African Americans,
demonstrated on behalf of the Scottsboro Boys and southern
tenant farmers, and was a regular speaker at numerous conferences
devoted to racial issues. She was also active in such
civil
rights organizations as the NAACP
and the National Urban League. Passionately committed to
African American history, she served as president of the
Association for the Study of Negro Life and History from
1936 to 1951.
During World War II, Bethune
served as special assistant to the secretary of war and
assistant director of the Women's Army Corps. In that capacity
she organized the first women's officer candidate schools
and lobbied federal officials, including Franklin
Roosevelt, on behalf of African American women who wanted
to join the military.
Bethune left the federal government after the NYA disbanded
in 1944. She continued as president of the National Council
of Negro Women until 1949 and, in that capacity, attended
the founding conference of the United Nations.
After her retirement, she returned to Florida where she
continued to speak and write about civil rights issues.
She died in 1955.
While Bethune was a well-established African American leader before she met Eleanor
Roosevelt in 1927, her career benefitted substantially from ER's enthusiastic support. ER valued
Bethune's political acumen and dynamic personality and was instrumental in bringing her to
Washington and into the NYA. She also saw to it that Bethune had regular access to Franklin
Roosevelt. Besides being political allies, ER and Bethune were very close personal friends.
They met on a regular basis, traveled together and attended many of the same meetings and
conferences. ER considered Bethune "a dear friend" and the two women remained close until
Bethune's death.
Sources
Cook, Blanche Wiesen. Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume Two,
1933-1938. New York: Viking Press, 1999. 158-161.
The Concise Dictionary of American Biography.
5th
ed. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1997, 55-57.
The Dictionary of American Biography. Supplement
4. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974, 703-704.
McCluskey, Audrey Thomas and Elaine M. Smith, eds. Mary
McLeod Bethune: Building a Better World. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2001, 3-16.
Black, Allida, ed. What I Hope to Leave Behind: The
Essential Essays of Eleanor Roosevelt. Brooklyn,
N.Y.: Carlson Publishing, Inc, 1995, 171-178.
Sicherman, Barbara and Carol Hurd Green, eds. Notable
American Women: The Modern Period. Cambridge, Mass.:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980, 76-80.