Pioneering American educator and civil rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune with her students at the one-room schoolhouse she founded, the Daytona Normal and Industrial School for Negro Girls, 1905. Library of Congress. “When They See Me, They Know That the Negro Is Present”
Mary McLeod Bethune In December 1927, Mary McLeod Bethune—college president, president of the National Association of Colored Women, and, like most African Americans, a staunch Republican—traveled to New York City to attend a luncheon hosted by the National Council of Women at the home of Sara Roosevelt, the mother of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who would soon become governor of New York. Bethune was the only Black woman there, and the simple act of finding a seat proved complicated when white delegates hesitated to eat with her. In defiance of the racial standards of segregation, Sara Roosevelt personally asked Bethune to sit beside her. Bethune later wrote, “from that moment my heart went out to Roosevelt. I visited her at her home many times subsequently, and our friendship became one of the most treasured relationships of my life.” 
National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution Mary McLeod Bethune was born in Mayesville, South Carolina, on July 10, 1875. She was the fifteenth of seventeen children born to parents, who, along with eight of her older siblings, had been enslaved. Despite their financial struggles, the family purchased five acres of land from their former master, and their fortunes improved. Mary would be the only McLeod child to get an education. She was particularly inspired by the African American teachers who “gave me my very first vision of the culture and ability of Negro women,” and ultimately inspired her to one day open a school of her own, one with a particular emphasis on the empowerment of Black women. In 1898 she married Albertus Bethune. They separated after nine years but never officially divorced, and Mary McLeod Bethune kept the surname for the rest of her life. In 1904 she founded the Educational and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls in Daytona Beach, Florida. The boarding school grew and evolved quickly, as did Bethune’s role in the Daytona Beach community. She opened McLeod Hospital there in 1911, which played a critical role in containing the influenza pandemic of 1918. Four years later she led the charge to convince the city to build a high school for African Americans. The local Ku Klux Klan confronted Bethune at her school. She and her students stood firm, singing hymns until the terrorists left. In 1923 Bethune’s school took a major step, merging with the oldest of Florida’s Black colleges, Cookman Institute, to form Bethune-Cookman College. The next year she became president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), an organization formed because white women’s clubs would not allow Black members. Bethune endorsed Republican Herbert Hoover for reelection against Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 but, when Roosevelt won, Bethune took part in one of the more dramatic political realignments in U.S. history, as African Americans fled to the Democratic Party. In 1934 First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt addressed the Commerce Department about the inequities of Black education: “We must wipe out the feeling of intolerance whenever we find it. . . . We must go ahead together, or we go down together.” She then shook hands with Bethune and the other Black speakers in attendance, breaking strict racist codes that forbade even formal physical contact between whites and blacks, demonstrating that a friendship had developed between the First Lady and Bethune—America’s most celebrated Black female leader. In 1935, the NAACP awarded Bethune its highest honor, the Spingarn Medal. This distinguished recognition, the rising prominence of Bethune-Cookman College, and her relationship with the Roosevelt family, paved the way for Bethune to find a political home in the New Deal as one of FDR’s Black advisers known informally as the Black Cabinet. At the urging of ER, she was one of two African Americans appointed to the advisory board of the National Youth Administration (NYA) which sought “to provide relief, work relief, and employment” for young people out of school or unemployed. Bethune, like the other members of Roosevelt’s Black Cabinet, had no direct role in policymaking, a shortcoming she fully recognized. Still, Bethune took justifiable pride in her symbolic importance in Washington, saying, “When they see me, they know that the Negro is present.” Bethune emerged as the de facto leader of the Black Cabinet, bringing its members into a new group, the Federal Council on Negro Affairs. She took on an equally ambitious task when she organized a new umbrella group for African American women activists, the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), which held its first meeting at the 137th Street YMCA in New York City in 1935. At the 1940 conference of the NCNW, 450 women met in Washington to discuss topics including “The Negro Woman in Public Affairs” and “The Problem of Citizenship.” ER attended, and Bethune introduced her on stage. Bethune met with FDR at the White House in 1939, twice in 1940, and again in 1944. She had hoped to have more influence in making sure that African Americans themselves played key roles in any discussions that involved Black people. In November 1941 ER relayed to her husband Bethune’s request to have “a Negro in a position who can actually confer with the President occasionally on problems that are pertinent to Negroes.” The president wrote on the memo, “No—any more than I can put in a Jew as such or a Spiritualist as such.” 
Mary McLeod Bethune hosting a meeting for the National Council of Negro Women at her Council House in Washington, DC. NPS Photo-Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site. Perhaps Bethune’s most notable wartime work was the NCNW’s drive to integrate Black women into the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). When the war began, Black women could not become WACs, even in segregated units, but Bethune convinced ER to force the military to make the change. Of the first group of 440 trainees to attend officer training school in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1942, forty were Black, and they trained in an integrated setting. Bethune and other NCNW members attended the first camp, which she called “democracy in action.” What Bethune did not know is that only classes and drills would be integrated. Barracks, social events, meals, recreation, and marches would continue to be segregated. When FDR died, Bethune joined the nation in mourning, sharing a poignant story that emphasized what she viewed as his empathy for African Americans. “I shall never forget that evening of the early days of his administration when he sat alone in his private office and I was privileged to talk with him,” she said. “I can see him now as he stretched forth his gracious hand in greeting. I can hear the pathos of his voice as he said: ‘Hello, Mrs. Bethune. Come in and sit down and tell me how your people are doing.’” Bethune died of a heart attack at home on May 20, 1955. Black Americans grieved, as did Eleanor Roosevelt, who wrote in “My Day” that she “will miss her very much, for I valued her wisdom and her goodness.” Noting that her “death was not far off,” Bethune had written an essay, “My Last Will and Testament,” published posthumously by Ebony magazine in August, where she provided a list of things that she wanted to leave to all African Americans, “in the hope that an old woman’s philosophy may give them inspiration.” She wrote about love, hope, the challenge of developing confidence of one another, a thirst for education, and respect for the uses of power. She encouraged her readers to remember that “the problem of color is world-wide.” Bethune’s relationship with the Roosevelts was personal and political. From their first meeting she had the support of Sara Delano Roosevelt, who made raising money for Bethune-Cookman College one of her most important projects. Bethune also had a tangible impact on FDR’s New Deal, ushering African Americans into federal positions and convening the Federal Council on Negro Affairs. But her closest relationship was with the first lady. Perhaps the most potent weapon that Bethune and ER deployed was the simple act of appearing together, in what historian Martha Jones has called “a conspicuous rejoinder to Jim Crow.” _______________________
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Last updated: January 14, 2024