Mary McLeod Bethune   (1875-1955) – Educator, Public Administrator, Civil Rights Activist

By Jerry Marx, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Chair, University of New Hampshire School of Social Work

Mary McLeod Bethune

Mary McLeod Bethune, the daughter of former slaves, became head of the Division of African-American Affairs within the National Youth Administration in 1936. She used this position to advocate for the needs of African Americans during the Great Depression, directing a more equitable share of New Deal funding to black education and employment.50 Born July 10, 1875 in Mayesville, South Carolina, Bethune received a scholarship to Scotia Seminary for Negro Girls in Concord, North Carolina. She later attended the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago from 1894 to 1895. In 1904, she founded the Daytona Educational and Industrial School for Negro Girls in Daytona Beach, Florida, a school that later merged with the Cookman Institute of Jacksonville to become Bethune-Cookman College.

An educator, organizer, and policy advocate, Bethune became one of the leading civil rights activists of her era. She led a group of African American women to vote after the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution (giving women the right to vote). In her position in the National Youth Administration, she became the highest paid African American in the federal government and a leading member of the unofficial “Black Cabinet” of the Roosevelt Administration. She later became the first African American woman to have a monument dedicated to her in Washington, D.C.