Mary McLeod Bethune, 1875-1955,
Educator and activist

By JOUNICE L. NEALY

© St. Petersburg Times, published November 28, 1999

Robust and stately, Mary Jane McLeod Bethune was a dedicated educator and sophisticated lobbyist who flouted the rules of race in the early 1900s and helped generations of black Americans see new possibilities for their lives.

Bethune, the 15th of 17 children born to former slaves, picked cotton in her native Mayesville, S.C., long before she learned to read. Edcuated with the help of scholarships, she married, became a teacher and, at 29, founded the Daytona Literary and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls. Famously, the school got its start with only "five little girls and $1.50." She then opened a hospital.

The school now is the four-year Bethune-Cookman College, in Daytona Beach. Among its alumni are African government officials, law professors, college basketball coaches and high-ranking business executives.

Bethune dedicated her life to God and to helping people. In 1924 she became president of the National Association of Colored Women, then the country's highest post for a black woman. She later founded the National Council of Negro Women and used the platform to challenge the War Department's exclusion of black women in the public relations unit.

Bethune also was a presidential adviser. Beginning in 1928, she participated in several national conferences on child welfare, home ownership and education. In 1936 she was confirmed as head of minority affairs of the National Youth Administration and became part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "black Cabinet."

She is the first black or woman to be honored with a statue on public land in Washington, D.C. And she was featured on a U.S. postal stamp in 1985.

She achieved all this through sheer force of personality. With her ramrod posture, melodic voice and firm eyes, she could charm almost anything from anybody.

Bethune, who believed she needed white people's support to help black people advance, created biracial advisory boards at the college and invited white beachside residents to sit wherever they wanted when they came for meetings.

Once, it is said, she refused to leave a whites-only railroad car and told the conductor, "I'm happy to be here ... so we're going to have a good time. We'll be riding this way as long as I want to. Thank you so much."

At a time when light-skinned blacks often were subtly favored by whites, the dark-skinned Bethune was known as an artful solicitor who was bold enough to show up unannounced at the homes of white philanthropists and ask for money. That was how she got donations from James Gamble, of Procter and Gamble.

Bethune left, as she said in her most famous speech, a legacy of love, hope and thirst for knowledge.

Jounice L. Nealy is a Times staff writer.