Bethune, Mary McLeod (1875–1955)

Tondra L. Loder-Jackson

Mary McLeod Bethune, an African American educational leader and stateswoman, had the ear of five U.S. Presidents (Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower) and inspired African Americans during her heyday to dub her first lady of the race, mother of the race, and the female Booker T. Washington. With early roots as a schoolteacher, Bethune is the first and only women to both found and serve as president of a historically African American college, Bethune-Cookman, which continues to thrive in Florida one century since its inception as the Daytona Educational and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls. A primary contribution of Bethune-Cookman College to African American education was its production of African American teachers in what were then the mostly segregated school systems of Florida. As the first woman president of the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools, the forerunner of ...

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