Speaker 1: Right now, it's time for the Way Black History Fact.
Speaker 1: And Today's Way Black History Fact is sponsored by Major Threads.
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Speaker 1: to talk about Mary McLeod Bethune. This is a name
Speaker 1: that I think that you should know, and I'll tell
Speaker 1: you why in just a second. But before we get there,
Speaker 1: Mary McLeod Bethune was the daughter of formerly enslaved parents.
Speaker 1: Mary Jane McLeod Bethune became one of the most important
Speaker 1: Black educators, civil rights and women's rights leaders, and government
Speaker 1: officials of the twentieth century. The college she founded set
Speaker 1: educational standards for today's black colleges, and her role as
Speaker 1: an advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave African Americans
Speaker 1: an advocate in government. Born July tenth, eighteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: near Maysville, South Carolina, Bethune was one of the last
Speaker 1: of Samuel and Patsy McLeod's seventeen children. After the Civil War,
Speaker 1: her mother worked for her former owner until she could
Speaker 1: buy the land on which the family grew caught. By
Speaker 1: age nine, Bethune could pick two hundred and fifty pounds
Speaker 1: of cotton a day. Bethune benefited from efforts to educate
Speaker 1: African Americans after the war, Graduating in eighteen ninety four
Speaker 1: from Scotia Seminary, a boarding school in North Carolina. Bethune
Speaker 1: next attended Dwight Moody's Institute for Home and Foreign Missions
Speaker 1: in Chicago, Illinois. But with no church willing to sponsor
Speaker 1: her as a missionary, Bethune became an educator. While teaching
Speaker 1: in South Carolina, she married a fellow teacher, Albertus Bethune,
Speaker 1: with whom she had a son. In eighteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: the Bethuns moved to Palatka, Florida, where Mary worked at
Speaker 1: the Presbyterian Church and also sold insurance. Nineteen oh four,
Speaker 1: her marriage ended, and determined to support her son, Bethune
Speaker 1: opened a boarding school, the Daytona Beach Literary and Industrial
Speaker 1: School for training Negro girls. Eventually, Bethune School became a college,
Speaker 1: merger with the all male Cookman Institute to form Bethune
Speaker 1: Cookman College in nineteen twenty nine. It issued its first
Speaker 1: degrees in nineteen forty three. A champion of racial and
Speaker 1: gender equality, Bethune founded many organizations and led voter registration
Speaker 1: drives after women gained the vote in nineteen twenty, risking
Speaker 1: racist attacks. In nineteen twenty four, she was elected president
Speaker 1: of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, and in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five she became the founding president of the
Speaker 1: National Council of Negro Women. Bethune also played a role
Speaker 1: in the transition of black voters from the Republican Party
Speaker 1: the Party of Lincoln, to the Democratic Party during the
Speaker 1: Great Depression. A friend of the Eleanor Roosevelt, in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six, Bethune became the highest ranking African American women
Speaker 1: in government when President Franklin Roosevelt named her Director of
Speaker 1: Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration, where she remained
Speaker 1: until nineteen forty four. She was also a leader of
Speaker 1: FDR's unofficial unofficial Black Cabinet teen thirty seven, but Thun
Speaker 1: organized a conference on the problems of the Negro and
Speaker 1: Negro Youth and fought to indiscrimination and lynching. In nineteen
Speaker 1: forty she became vice president of the National Association for
Speaker 1: the Advancement of Colored People, or the NAACP, a position
Speaker 1: she held for the rest of her life. As a
Speaker 1: member of the advisory board of that In nineteen forty two,
Speaker 1: she created the Women's Army Corps, soon ensured it was
Speaker 1: racially integrated. Appointed by President Harry S. Truman, Bethune was
Speaker 1: the only woman of color at the founding Conference of
Speaker 1: the United Nations in nineteen forty five. She regularly wrote
Speaker 1: for leading African American newspapers, The Pittsburgh Courier and the
Speaker 1: Chicago Defender, and on nineteen On July thirteenth, nineteen twenty two,
Speaker 1: Bethune became the first African American woman to be represented
Speaker 1: with a state statue in the National Statuary All Collection
Speaker 1: at the US Capitol. And we want to shout her
Speaker 1: out because we are now working with the National Council
Speaker 1: of Negro Women, one of the organizations that she founded,
Speaker 1: and is important for you to know the history behind
Speaker 1: the founder