Mary McLeod Bethune

Mary McLeod Bethune (* July 10, 1875 in Mayesville, South Carolina, † May 18, 1955 in Daytona Beach, Florida) was an African American women's and civil rights activist.

Youth and Education

McLeod was born the fifteenth of seventeen children of former slaves Samuel and Patsy McLeod. As a child, she helped with the harvest in the cotton fields and only visited a Presbyterian mission school from the age of eleven years. Because of their talent, she received a scholarship to attend the Scotia Seminary, a school for African American girls in Concord / North Carolina. After finishing school in 1894, she attended Dwight Moody's Institute for Home and Foreign Missions in Chicago with the intention of going as a missionary to Africa.

Teaching and school management activity

After her application had been rejected for this, she returned in 1896 returned to Mayesville, where she taught at the Presbyterian school. She was then at the Haines Institute in Augusta and the Kindell Institute in Sumpter worked before 1904 a school in Daytona Beach founded the Daytona Literary and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls. Inter alia she managed to win the company Procter & Gamble as a supporter of their school. 1924 was the merger with the Cookman Institute of Jacksonville at Bethune - Cookman Collegiate Institute, which was later renamed Bethune - Cookman College ( see also Historic African-American colleges and universities ). Bethune remained until 1942 President of the College.

In addition, it was for many years president of the Central Life Insurance Company of Tampa and Director of African- American Life Insurance Company of Jacksonville and founded by her in 1940 Bethune - Volusia Beach Corporation.

Activities in the civil rights movement

Bethune was also active in the civil rights movement. As a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ), she campaigned for the abolition of Jim Crow laws and was therefore at times persecuted by the Ku Klux Klan. From 1924 to 1928 she was president of the National Association of Colored Women; In 1935 she founded the National Council of Negro Women ( NCNW ), whose president was. In 1940 she was also elected president of the NAACP.

1936 appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as Director for African-American Affairs and Commissioner for Minority Affairs of the National Youth Administration. During the Second World War she was adviser to the U.S. Secretary of War for the selection of the first black female officer candidates for the Women's Army Corps. In 1944 she was National Commander of the Women's Army for National Defense.

1945 Bethune was sent by President Harry S Truman as a consultant for the founding meeting of the UN. 1949 gave its president Dumarsais Estimé the Haitian Medal of Honor and Merit. In 1949 she was honored by the Liberian President William S. Tubman as a Commander of the Order of the Star of Africa.

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