Early life

Mary McLeod was born on July 10, 1875, near Mayesville, South Carolina. She was the 15th of 17 children. Her parents were former slaves who grew cotton on a small farm in Sumter County. Only white students were allowed to attend the public schools there. But after a missionary opened a one-room school for black students in 1885, Mary McLeod enrolled.

Planning to become a missionary, she continued her studies at Barber-Scotia College in Concord, North Carolina. Later she attended the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois. Graduating in 1895, she began teaching in mission schools for African Americans in the South. In 1898 she married Albert Bethune, a former schoolteacher.

Career

In 1904 Mary McLeod Bethune rented a small building in Daytona Beach, Florida, and opened it as a school for black students—the Daytona Educational and Industrial Institute. Bethune later said she began it with nothing more than “five little girls, a dollar and a half, and faith in God.” Within two years she had 250 pupils, most of them girls.

By 1923 the school, then known as the Daytona Normal and Industrial School, merged with the Cookman Institute, a nearby men's college. It was later renamed Bethune-Cookman College, the name it bears today.

A firm believer in the importance of education for all, Bethune became nationally known for her efforts. In 1936 she was selected to serve as director of the National Youth Administration, advising President Franklin D. Roosevelt on matters concerning young African Americans. She was the first black woman to hold so high an office in the federal government.

Bethune remained in that job until 1943. In addition, she served as an officer of such organizations as the Urban League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She also founded the National Council of Negro Women (in 1935). After a lifetime of public service, Bethune died on May 18, 1955, in Daytona Beach.