Good News Network: in History, July 10, birthdate of Mary McLeod Bethune in 1875

[abqtommy]

On this day 146 years ago, Mary McLeod Bethune was born to former slaves in South Carolina. She realized as a child, the importance of learning to read and set her sights on becoming a teacher for her family and other black children.

In her 20s, she rented a small house, constructed benches and desks from discarded crates, made ink from elderberries, and opened a rigorous training school for girls in Daytona, Florida. Bethune also courted wealthy white benefactors like John D. Rockefeller to grow her school.

In 1931, it became the Bethune-Cookman College. Later, Bethune became a close adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt and the only black woman present at the founding of the UN. So numerous were her awards, accolades, and accomplishments that she has been called one of America’s greatest women, with “one of the most dramatic careers ever enacted at any time upon the stage of human activity.”…

There's a little more text and some photos at link:

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/events060710/

This is new information for me and now I know.

[Wounded Bear]

1. K & R...for visibility...nt

[smirkymonkey]

2. K&R

What an amazing person!

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mary-mcleod-bethune

A champion of racial and gender equality, Bethune founded many organizations and led voter registration drives after women gained the vote in 1920, risking racist attacks. In 1924, she was elected president of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, and in 1935, she became the founding president of the National Council of Negro Women.

Bethune also played a role in the transition of black voters from the Republican Party—“the party of Lincoln”—to the Democratic Party during the Great Depression. A friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, in 1936, Bethune became the highest ranking African American woman in government when President Franklin Roosevelt named her director of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration, where she remained until 1944. She was also a leader of FDR’s unofficial “black cabinet.”

In 1937 Bethune organized a conference on the Problems of the Negro and Negro Youth, and fought to end discrimination and lynching. In 1940, she became vice president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Persons (NAACP), a position she held for the rest of her life. As a member of the advisory board that in 1942 created the Women’s Army Corps, Bethune ensured it was racially integrated. Appointed by President Harry S. Truman, Bethune was the only woman of color at the founding conference of the United Nations in 1945. She regularly wrote for the leading African American newspapers, the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender.

[BumRushDaShow]

3. Happy birthday to her and thanks for posting!

She was a year older than my great-grandfather (who was born in 1876). They were literally around just 10 years post-"legal" slavery, which was also around the time of the U.S.'s Centennial celebration.

There are a number of resources on her but I found a pretty good one here - https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/mary-mcleod-bethune

Pic of her in 1905 with some of her students -



Pic from 1937 with Eleanor Roosevelt -



Pic of her during WW2 in 1944 as a WAND -



She founded the NCNW (National Council for Negro Women, famously headed up a few years after Bethune's death, by the "next generation" activist, Dorthy Height) and was the first woman to have a National Monument erected in her honor in D.C. near the U.S Capitol (where Height spearheaded getting the Monument in place in 1974) -



https://www.nps.gov/places/000/mary-mcleod-bethune-memorial.htm

[crickets]

4. Thanks for reminding us of this amazing woman, abqtommy et al. K&R

[abqtommy]

5. K&R