During an era when de facto segregation in the North and Jim Crow laws in the South kept many African Americans from recognizing their full potential as citizens of the United States, a remarkable woman rose to prominence on the socio-political scene. Born in the cotton-growing region of Mayesville, South Carolina, Mary McLeod Bethune spearheaded changes that helped to bolster the African American community against institutionalized racism. Her numerous achievements include: founding the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute in 1904, which became Bethune-Cookman College in 1923; working as the Director of Negro Affairs for the National Youth Administration (NYA) for the Roosevelt administration during the 1930's; and founding the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) in 1935. Underlying this impressive list of accomplishments, however, was a fundamental belief that the quality of life for African Americans could be improved on social, economic, and political levels.

Bethune envisioned a better world for African Americans, one in which blacks would rightfully garner respect from white American and international communities while simultaneously engendering respect for themselves. This was an important concept for Bethune who fought against widespread negative stereotypes of African American traditions and culture propagated by films such as "The Birth of a Nation" (1915), largely based on the anti-black writings of Thomas Dixon. Popular culture as well as some so-called historical writings imaged African Americans as ineducable, incapable of self-governance, and best suited for menial jobs that would keep them in a subservient position relative to whites.

Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) and its accompanying publication, The Journal of Negro History between 1915 and 1916 to delegitimize negative historical stereotypes regarding African Americans. He organized the ASNLH Council to address administrative and funding concerns for the organization and appointed Bethune to serve in 1930. She retained this position until 1933, thus helping to ensure that the ASNLH would continue its mission to recognize African Americans as historical actors who had participated fully in the shaping of American society.¹ Bethune served as president of the ASNLH from 1936-1951 during which time she encouraged Woodson to publish the Negro History Bulletin, a journal designed to make black history accessible to the community at large.²

Bethune focused her energies upon creating employment and educational opportunities for blacks particularly after the stock market crash of 1929. When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced his New Deal program, he also formed a committee to deal directly with black economic issues especially those of the rural south.

Roosevelt recognized Bethune as the exceptional educator who had inaugurated Bethune-Cookman College in 1923, and appointed her Director of the Negro Division of the NYA in 1935. According to John Hope Franklin, Bethune became a member of the "black brain trust" of academicians, attorneys and other highly trained professionals who were assigned to specific projects under the New Deal.³

Bethune's principle responsibility was to provide jobs for youth between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four, a few of whom were graduate students. Bethune helped put more than 64,000 black youth to work in both work study and out-of-school programs designed to assist the reforestation and soil conservation efforts so popular during the World War II era.⁴ Until the close of the NYA division in 1944, Bethune also provided more than $600,000 in funding for black students enrolled in college and graduate school programs.⁵

The council, later dubbed the "Black Cabinet" was limited in its powers by what one historian describes as Roosevelt's inherent "pragmatism" in refusing to completely eliminate de jure segregation. Bethune, however, remained an optimist. She was able to skillfully balance the concerns of African Americans while simultaneously opening doors for women across racial lines. This was because, unlike many of her colleagues within the Black Cabinet, Bethune had achieved access to the Executive Office through developing a confidante in the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, and through her activities in the women's club movement.

When Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) in 1935, it was after years of dedicated service to women's organizations on a national level. After opening the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute, a single-sex school for girls in 1904, Bethune joined the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1912 in order to solicit support for the school that she believed only a national women's organization could provide. Following that effort, Bethune also served as president of the Florida Federation of Colored Women's Clubs between 1917 and 1924, became the eighth president of the NACW between 1924 and 1928, and headed the leadership of the Southeastern Association of Colored Women from 1920 to 1925.

Like their white counterparts, many black women's clubs had begun to focus more on the social and political needs of the middle and upper classes often leaving poor working women absent from their agendas. To address this and many other issues, Bethune established the NCNW in 1935, which soon set the standard for women's clubs across the country. She also wanted women to have more of a voice the political realm of social action and thought that a national organization such as the NCNW would meet that objective:

"I am interested in women and believe in their possibilities . . . We need a vision for larger things . . . We need a united organization to open doors for women so that when it speaks, its power will be felt."⁶

The Bethune Museum and Archives, Inc (BMA)*, commemorates her legacy and is located inside the victorian town house that she purchased in 1943 to serve as the headquarters of the NCNW. BMA interprets the history and culture of African American women through public programs, exhibitions, and a quarterly newsletter, Legacy. The Archives is the country's largest repository for research on African American women in the U.S. and is open to researchers by appointment.

Tammy Lynn Pertillar, scholar of African American and Brazilian history, is Program Assistant at the Bethune Museum and Archives, Inc. in Washington, D.C.

¹ August Meier and Eliot Rudwick, Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915-1980 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 60-61. [Return to text]

² Bettye J. Gardner, "Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History," in Darlene Clark Hine, Elsa Barkley Brown and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, eds., Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia vol. 2 A-L (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 46-48. [Return to text]

³ John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans. 6th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1988), 349. [Return to text]

⁴ Ibid., 353. [Return to text]

⁵ Moira Davison Reynolds, Women Champions of Human Rights: Eleven U.S. Leaders of the Twentieth Century (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, Inc., 1991), 51. [Return to text]

⁶ Elaine M. Smith, "Mary McLeod Bethune and the National Youth Administration," in Clio Was a Woman: Studies in the History of American Women by Mabel E. Deutrich and Virginia C. Purdy, eds. (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1980), 158. [Return to text]

^* Contact the gift shop at the Bethune Museum and Archives National Historic Site, 1318 Vermont Ave. N.W. Washington D.C. 20005 or (202) 332-1233 for materials available for purchase including Teacher's Kits. [Return to text]

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