The daughter of formerly enslaved South Carolinians, Mary McLeod Bethune opened a school for Black girls in Daytona, Florida, in 1904 with a handful of pupils and almost no money, and built it into Bethune-Cookman College. From that base she became the leading Black woman in American public life in the 1930s and 1940s: founder of the National Council of Negro Women, the highest-ranking Black woman in the Roosevelt administration, and the convener of its informal “Black Cabinet.”
At a Glance
- Born
- 10 July 1875, Mayesville, South Carolina
- Died
- 18 May 1955, Daytona Beach, Florida
- Birth name
- Mary Jane McLeod
- Known for
- Founding the Daytona school that became Bethune-Cookman University (1904); the National Council of Negro Women (1935); Director of Negro Affairs, National Youth Administration (1939–1944)
- HBCU ties
- Barber-Scotia College (Attended Scotia Seminary, early 1890s); Bethune-Cookman University (Founded, 1904; president until 1942)
- Fields
- Education · Politics · Organizing
- Era
- Turn of the Century
Early Life
Mary Jane McLeod was born on 10 July 1875 near Mayesville, South Carolina, the fifteenth of seventeen children of Samuel McLeod and Patsy McIntosh McLeod. Her parents and many of her older siblings had been enslaved; she was among the first of the children born free. After emancipation the family bought a small farm, and she picked cotton alongside her parents.
She began her schooling at the Trinity Presbyterian Mission School in Mayesville, a school for Black children run by the Presbyterian Church. A scholarship funded by a white Colorado teacher, Mary Chrisman, took her to Scotia Seminary for Negro Girls in Concord, North Carolina, where she completed her studies in the early 1890s. She then studied at the Bible Institute for Home and Foreign Missions in Chicago, later the Moody Bible Institute, hoping to serve as a missionary in Africa. The Presbyterian mission board declined to send her, telling her it had no openings for Black missionaries there.
She turned to teaching instead, working at the Haines Normal and Industrial Institute in Augusta, Georgia, under its founder, Lucy Craft Laney, whose example of a Black woman building a school she later cited as formative, and at the Kindell Institute in Sumter, South Carolina. In May 1898 she married Albertus Bethune; their only child, Albert McLeod Bethune, was born in 1899. The couple moved to Palatka, Florida, where she ran a Presbyterian mission school.
Life and Work
In October 1904 Bethune opened a boarding school for Black girls in Daytona, Florida, drawn by the railroad construction that had brought Black laboring families to the area. By her own account she began with five girls, her son, and $1.50. Students made ink from elderberries and furniture from packing crates, and Bethune raised money by selling sweet-potato pies and soliciting wealthy winter residents, among them the manufacturer James N. Gamble. Within two years enrollment had grown to about 250. In 1923 the school merged with the Cookman Institute of Jacksonville, and it took the name Bethune-Cookman College in 1929. She served as its president until 1942.
Bethune rose through the Black women’s club movement. She led the Florida Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs and from 1924 to 1928 was president of the National Association of Colored Women. Convinced that Black women needed a single coordinating voice in national politics, she founded the National Council of Negro Women in New York on 5 December 1935, uniting existing organizations, and served as its president until 1949. The NAACP awarded her the Spingarn Medal in 1935.
Through her friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt, Bethune became a New Deal insider. She joined the National Youth Administration in 1936 as an adviser, and in January 1939 she was named director of its Division of Negro Affairs, a post she held until 1944 and the highest federal appointment an African American woman had held to that time. She used the position to steer NYA funds toward Black students and to press for Black participation in federal programs. In August 1936 she organized the Federal Council on Negro Affairs, the group of Black officials in the administration known as the “Black Cabinet,” which met to coordinate pressure on the White House.
During the Second World War she pushed for the admission of Black women to the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps and its officer training. In 1943 the National Council of Negro Women acquired a townhouse at 1318 Vermont Avenue NW in Washington, which served as its headquarters and as Bethune’s Washington residence. In 1945 she attended the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco as an unofficial observer, alongside the NAACP consultants W. E. B. Du Bois and Walter White.
Legacy
Bethune retired to Daytona Beach and died there on 18 May 1955, at 79. She is buried on the Bethune-Cookman campus near her home, which is preserved as a historic site. Her “Last Will and Testament,” published in Ebony shortly after her death, set out the values she hoped to leave to her people.
On 10 July 1974, the ninety-ninth anniversary of her birth, a bronze memorial by the sculptor Robert Berks was unveiled in Lincoln Park in Washington, the first monument in a public park in the capital to honor an African American woman. The Vermont Avenue townhouse is now the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site. On 13 July 2022 a marble statue of Bethune by Nilda M. Comas was installed in the U.S. Capitol as one of Florida’s two contributions to the National Statuary Hall Collection, replacing a statue of the Confederate general Edmund Kirby Smith; she is the first African American represented by a state in the collection.
Historians credit Bethune with linking the Black women’s club tradition to federal policy, and with using access to the White House to win concrete resources for Black communities at a time when most federal agencies excluded them. The institutions she founded, Bethune-Cookman University and the National Council of Negro Women, both remain active.
Bethune built institutions, from a Florida school to a national council of women, and used her access to the White House to win concrete resources for Black communities. Open the classroom lesson →
Key Dates
- 10 July 1875 Born near Mayesville, South Carolina.
- 1898 Marries Albertus Bethune; son Albert born the following year.
- October 1904 Opens a school for Black girls in Daytona, Florida.
- 1923 School merges with Cookman Institute; renamed Bethune-Cookman College in 1929.
- 1924–1928 Serves as president of the National Association of Colored Women.
- 5 December 1935 Founds the National Council of Negro Women.
- August 1936 Organizes the Federal Council on Negro Affairs, the “Black Cabinet.”
- January 1939 Named director of the Division of Negro Affairs, National Youth Administration.
- 18 May 1955 Dies in Daytona Beach, Florida.
- 13 July 2022 Her statue is installed in National Statuary Hall, the first of an African American.
Sources and Further Reading
- Audrey Thomas McCluskey and Elaine M. Smith, eds., Mary McLeod Bethune: Building a Better World; Essays and Selected Documents (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).
- Joyce A. Hanson, Mary McLeod Bethune and Black Women’s Political Activism (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003).
- National Park Service, “Mary McLeod Bethune.” Link
- National Park Service, Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site. Link
- Architect of the Capitol, “Mary McLeod Bethune.” Link
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