Women Studies
For I am my mother's daughter, and the drums of Africa still beat in my heart. They will not let me rest while there is a single Negro boy or girl without a chance to prove his worth. ---Mary McLeod Bethune
How did Mary McLeod Bethune contribute to women’s lives today?

She was born in Maysville, South Carolina, to African American former slaves on July 10, 1875. She was the fifteenth child of seventeen. She helped on the family farm until she was 10 or 11 when she began her education at a Presbyterian mission school. She continued her schooling at Scotia Seminary and then at Moody Bible Institute.

Bethune wanted to become a missionary to Africa but was told that African Americans couldn’t serve as missionaries in Africa and turned her energies to being an educator.

Her greatest contribution that continues to give to all people today was when she began a school for African American girls in 1904 in Dayton Beach, Florida. It began with only five girls and her own son; tuition was $0.50 a week. In 1923 the school merged with the Cookman Institute which was a school for boys. Through the years the school flourished and in 2007 was granted university status and has become known as the Bethune-Cookman University.

The school was by-far not the only thing that Mary Bethune did in her life.

She helped to establish a home for delinquent African American girls. In 1940 she founded the Bethune-Volusia Beach Corporation which was a recreation area and housing development. A library was made for the general public after she spoke with W.E.B. Dubois and found out that he was not allowed to check out one of his own books because of his race. At the time, this was the only free source of reading materials for African Americans in Florida. Bethune also formed a hospital after one of the students was reluctantly taken care of at an all-white hospital.

Mary Bethune served in various positions under five different presidents from Coolidge to Roosevelt.

In 1949 she became the first African American to receive an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Rollins College from a white southern college.

In 1974 Mary McLeod Bethune became the first woman and the first African American to be honored with a statute in a public park in Washington, D.C.

Bethune died on May 18, 1955 of a heart attack in Daytona Beach.

The three videos posted depict the three phases of her life, beginning, middle and, end. They go into much greater detail about this extraordinary woman. My sources for this article were: