Introducing: Mary McLeodBiography
Mary McLeod was born in 1875 in Mayesville, South Carolina.
She was the first of her siblings not to be born into slavery.
Mary attended the Trinity Mission School where she graduated and decided she wanted to continue her education.
In 1887 she began to study at the Scotia Seminary School in Concord.
In 1888 she moved to Chicago where she attended Dwight Moody’s Institute for Home and Foreign Missions where she hoped to become a missionary.
She met and later married her husband Albertus Bethune.
A year later she gave birth to a son Albert.
In 1896 after seeing how hard it was being a black woman in America Mary then formed the National Association of Colored Women.
In 1904 Mary decided this wasn’t enough and wanted to give African American girls a head start in life. She rented a small house and turned it into the Bethune-Cookman School.
In 1907 her husband left claiming that she dedicated too much of her time to a failing school.
In 1910 the enrolment of the school rose from just 5 pupils to 250 and by 1923 had merged with the Cookman Institute for Men turning it into a co-educational institution.
In 1935 Mary founded the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) in order to get more rights for African American Women.
"If our people are to fight their way up out of bondage we must arm them with the sword and the shield and buckler of pride - belief in themselves and their possibilities, based upon a sure knowledge of the achievements of the past."
In 1938 the NCNW hosted the White House Confrence significantly displaying the presence of black women in democratic roles.
Mary was an active member of the sufrogets and continued to campaign for equal rights for African American women.
In 1955 Mary died of a heart attack and was burried on the grounds of the retreat, her school farm which has now become a world known private University.
Buisness Accomplishments
After founding the Bethune Cookman School Mary was president of the college from 1923- 1942 and was one of the first women in the world to serve as
college president at the time.
college president at the time. In 1930 after founding the National Council of Negro Women she served as its president for 14 years and it became the first black controlled organization in Washington DC.
In the late 1930’s after hearing about the work Mary was doing for African Americans, President Roosevelt hired her to be in charge of black affairs within the National Youth Administrative.
In 1949 Mary became the first woman to be given the Medal of Honor and Merit at the Haitian Exposition, Haiti's highest award.
In 1985 after her death the US Postal Service issued a stamp in honor of her fight for equal rights and the founding of her school.
In 1989 Ebony Magazine listed her on their list of "50 Most Important Figures in Black US History"
Charity work
In 1911 after some of Mary’s students became seriously ill and were refused treatment in a hospital, Mary established her own free Hospital which was part of the school in order to offer medical treatment to African Americans.
In 1953 Mary donated money and founded the ‘Mary McLeod Bethune Foundation’ in order to promote research, interracial activity and the sponsorship of wider educational opportunities for ethnic minorities.
In 2004 the Bethune Cookman University (which was once the Bethune Cookman School) celebrated it’s 100 year anniversary. There are now 36 buildings that educate approximately 3,000 students from almost every state in the United States and 35 countries. Their annual operating budget is $50 million and they have a $26 million endowment. The university offers 37 majors in six major colleges and is known as being one of the best African American Schools in the nation.
By Danielle Jawando
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