Biography on mary mcleod bethune

(1875-1955)

Who Was Mary McLeod Bethune?

Mary McLeod Bethune was a child of formerly enslaved people. She graduated from the Scotia Seminary for Girls in 1893.

Believing that education provided the key to racial advancement, Bethune founded the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute in 1904, which later became Bethune-Cookman College. She founded the National Council of Negro Women in 1935.

Biography on mary mcleod bethune quotes

Bethune died in 1955.

Early Life

Born Mary Jane McLeod on July 10, 1875, in Mayesville, South Carolina, Mary McLeod Bethune was a leading educator and civil rights activist. She grew up in poverty, as one of 17 children born to formerly enslaved people.

Everyone in the family worked, and many toiled in the fields, picking cotton. Bethune became the one and only child in her family to go to school when a missionary opened a school nearby for African American children. Traveling miles each way, she walked to school each day and did her best to share her newfound knowle