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Mary McLeod Bethune a trailblazer for civil rights, educational opportunity, racial harmony

The Daytona Beach News-Journal

DAYTONA BEACH — Patsy and Samuel McLeod knew the cruelty and harsh realities for Blacks in the Civil War-era South.

When the former slaves' 15th child was born in 1875, they undoubtedly hoped their baby girl Mary would live a purely free life, have the chances they never did to get an education and one day be a wife and mother.

From the 19th century view on their small South Carolina rice and cotton farm, never could they have imagined what was ahead for the person the world would come to know as Mary McLeod Bethune after she married in 1898.

Mary McLeod Bethune packed a long list of accomplishments into her 79 years that helped Black people get an education, gain civil rights, have a voice and increase earning potential. Bethune is pictured on her birthday in July 1954, about 10 months before she died. (Photo provided by Patricia Jensen Corbett)

She started a fledgling school for girls that evolved into Bethune-Cookman University. Her quest for civil rights and women's right to vote took her to Washington, D.C., where she became the only African American woman to help the U.S. delegation that created the United Nations charter.

She created the National Council of Negro Women, directed the Office of Minority Affairs in the National Youth Administration, and became a general in the Women's Army for the National Defense.

She became an advisor to four U.S. presidents, including Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Learn about the new Mary McLeod Bethune statue:She was an influential civil rights pioneer. Now her statue will replace a Confederate general's in the US Capitol.

Leonard Lempel, a retired history professor who taught at Bethune-Cookman University from 1980-1996, said it wouldn't be a reach to consider Bethune "the mother of the civil rights movement."

"She set the stage in the 1930s. She sparked it," said Lempel, who also taught history at Daytona State College from 1996-2015. "I think Mary McLeod Bethune was one of the key figures in launching the modern civil rights movement through her activism, her political skills and her ability to convince the Roosevelt administration to do things. The civil rights movement really began in the Great Depression with the New Deal."

Bethune gets a seat at the table

Roosevelt used the New Deal to give Blacks middle management jobs and a voice, Lempel said. Roosevelt also created what came to be known as the Black Cabinet, and Bethune was a leader of that cabinet.

The Black Cabinet was made up of an unofficial group of advisors who met in Bethune's Washington, D.C., home and strategized. Combined with her official positions in the nation's capital, Bethune held some sway.

"It was a big deal then for Blacks to have any influence," Lempel said.

Mary McLeod Bethune was the first in her family to learn to read, and she dreamed of being a missionary in Africa. But she was blocked from missionary work abroad because she was Black. So instead she poured herself into a plethora of efforts that helped Blacks in Daytona Beach and nationwide.

He said Bethune groomed herself to become a leader by starting various organizations for women and Blacks.

Bethune originally wanted to be a missionary in Africa, but she was turned down because she was Black. She eventually let go of her dream of being a missionary abroad, but she wound up becoming a missionary of sorts for Daytona Beach and eventually for Blacks nationwide.

In 1904 she decided to start a school for girls in Daytona Beach. She rented a small house for $11 a month in the only part of town where Blacks could live, run businesses, worship and go to school.

She made benches and desks from discarded crates, pencils from burned wood and ink from elderberry juice. The Educational and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls site bordered Daytona Beach's trash dump, so Bethune raised money selling sweet potato pies, ice cream and fried fish to crews at the dump.

She went on to do much more for Daytona Beach, including opening a hospital for Black people, securing oceanfront land so Blacks could go to the beach, and convincing city leaders to build sidewalks and create a city-funded Black police force for the Black neighborhood.

She also stood up to the Ku Klux Klan when they marched onto her campus, bravely coming outside and refusing to budge when they approached.

Lempel said two gifts Bethune left behind were self-respect for Blacks, and a place for Blacks to get a college degree, which together allowed a Black middle class to form in Daytona Beach. Bethune also trained women to vote when they gained that right for the first time in 1920, he said.

"She was very practical and able to compromise," Lempel said. "She was criticized for not asking for more, but she knew the limits of how far to push. If she challenged segregation she would have been lynched. She worked within the system."

Against all odds, Mary McLeod Bethune opened a school for girls in 1904 in a rented house in Daytona Beach, Florida. Bethune, pictured with her students in 1905, eventually grew the school into what became Bethune-Cookman University.

'Way ahead of her time'

Abel Bartley, a professor of African American history at Clemson University, said Bethune was one of the rare female Black civil rights activists of the 20th century.

"She embodied the hopes and the wishes Blacks had for that period," said Bartley, a native of Jacksonville. "She knew how to articulate that in ways that did not offend the white South."

He said she was "way ahead of her time," and had an incredible level of courage. She pushed the limits of what a Black woman of her generation could accomplish and was successful perhaps because people underestimated her and didn't push back, Bartley said.

She also understood the minds of elite white people, he said. Over and over, she was able to convince wealthy white people to help in her efforts.

One of Bethune's biggest legacies, Bartley said, is the tens of thousands of students who attended the schools she started for young girls, high schoolers and college students. Those pupils have gone on to become ministers, attorneys, nurses, teachers, government officials, law enforcement officers and other types of professionals.

Among Mary McLeod Bethune's impressive feats was securing oceanfront land south of New Smyrna Beach, Florida, so Black people could go to the beach without being arrested or harassed. Bethune, pictured second from the left, is shown on the beach named for her along with J.N. Crooms, far left, Evangeline Moore, and George Engram, on the right. Engram, who became the most hands-on investor, built the Welricha Motel and a bar and restaurant called the Beach Casino.

Lasting legacies

"Mary McLeod Bethune is my shero," said Sheila Flemming-Hunter, an adjunct history professor at Clark Atlanta University who wrote a book on Bethune-Cookman College. "She was a Renaissance woman."

Bethune did everything from selling life insurance to Black people in the 1930s and 1940s to establishing a hospital in Daytona Beach's historically Black Midtown neighborhood that operated until the late 1950s.

She said Bethune left educational, economic, political, religious and spiritual legacies. The force of all that is still being felt today in the institutions Bethune founded and worked with, said Flemming-Hunter, an early 1970s graduate of Bethune-Cookman College, which is now a university.

The National Council of Negro Women, for example, still exists and impacts Black women's political participation, she said.

Bethune-Cookman University has become a major employer in Daytona Beach, creating an economic impact on the city for decades, said Flemming-Hunter, who has been a professor and held high-level administrative positions at Bethune-Cookman University, the University of Texas, the University of Maryland and Clark Atlanta University.

The new marble sculpture of Mary McLeod Bethune was made in an artists' studio in a small Tuscan village in Italy. Pictured is master sculptor Nilda Comas, in the white dress, and members of the Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune Statuary Fund Board at the official unveiling of the statue in October 2021 at the News-Journal Center in Daytona Beach.

'Can't get enough of Bethune's story'

Bethune improved racial tolerance in Daytona Beach during an era when there was very little throughout the South, said Mayor Derrick Henry.

"Mary McLeod Bethune has an unrivaled place in our history," Henry said. "She is on Daytona Beach's Mount Rushmore."

There is no large rock formation anywhere with Bethune's face on it to celebrate the trailblazer, who died in 1955. But there are two new statues of Bethune created in an artists' studio in Italy.

If all goes as hoped, a new bronze sculpture of Bethune will be permanently placed in Daytona Beach's Riverfront Park in May or June, and a marble sculpture honoring Bethune will move into National Statuary Hall inside the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., in May.

After the statues were completed last year, the marble statue was shipped to Daytona Beach, where more than 10,000 people were able to see it during a temporary display inside the News-Journal Center.

A group of Daytona Beach leaders shepherded the years-long effort to get the two sculptures created and placed. The marble statue will be the first in Statuary Hall's state collection to honor an African American, male or female.

Henry said people "can't get enough of Bethune's story" because it "resonates with who we are and who we aspire to be."

You can contact Eileen at Eileen.Zaffiro@news-jrnl.com