Civil Service Spotlight: Mary McLeod Bethune — Educator, Trailblazer, Public Servant
Mary McCleod Bethune was born in Mayesville, South Carolina in 1875 as the child of formerly enslaved sharecroppers. Mary always believed that there was a higher purpose for her life, and that she would achieve it. Mary’s parents seem to have felt the same, because they were committed to getting her an education – no easy feat in segregated postbellum South Carolina. Despite the challenges involved, she began her elementary education at age 10, and went on to missionary training school in Chicago.
Mary, who later became Dr. Bethune, was determined to take advantage of these crucial but hard-won opportunities and would become a driving force for the education of Black children in the United States. In 1904, she founded the Daytona Literary and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls in Daytona Beach, Florida. She constantly sought ways to expand and offer more students chances to excel. Eventually she would join forces with educators at the Cookman Institute (a similar boys school) to build what would become Bethune-Cookman College (B-CU) in 1941. Today, B-CU is an accredited university.
Mary McLeod Bethune with girls from the Literary and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls in Daytona, circa 1905. Source: Photographs of Mary McLeod Bethune, her school, and family from the Florida State Archives Photographic Collection. Retrieved October 22, 2007.
In 1935, she founded the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), bringing together representatives of 28 different organizations to work to improve the lives of black women and their communities.
“It is our pledge,” she said of the council, “to make a lasting contribution to all that is finest and best in America, to cherish and enrich her heritage of freedom and progress by working for the integration of all her people regardless of race, creed, or national origin, into her spiritual, social, cultural, civic, and economic life, and thus aid her to achieve the glorious destiny of a true and unfettered democracy.”
Advocates like Dr. Bethune were convinced that education and personal industry played a significant role in remedying inequity - but only if the government was willing to remedy segregation and offer communities of color real opportunities for advancement and justice. For decades, politicians and officials took no action, and often rolled back what little progress had been made to curry favor with segregationists. When the Great Depression devastated the nation as a whole, there was even less incentive for them to address the specific injustices faced by a marginalized community.
With the New Deal recovery, Dr. Bethune saw an opportunity for progress. And she would not waste it. President Franklin Roosevelt appointed her to the National Youth Administration (NYA), first as an advisor, then as Director of the Division of Negro Affairs, making her the first Black woman to serve as a division head in the federal government. The mission of the NYA, which was part of the Works Progress Administration, was to provide economic relief to young people aged 16 to 24 through educational aid, job training skills, and employment opportunities.
As Division Director, Dr. Bethune kept a packed schedule and toured the country to oversee NYA projects, investigate claims of discrimination, and give speeches extolling the successes of New Deal programs at large, and particularly within the Black community. During the life of the NYA, the agency helped nearly 300,000 black youth, providing them with a foothold in the job market and a shot at economic security.
Dr. Bethune was not the only high-ranking Black official in the Roosevelt administration. In fact, she was part of a small but growing group of Black appointees and career civil servants, sometimes informally known as “The Black Cabinet,” that organized their efforts to ensure that the recovery and the programs of the New Deal did not exclude the Black community. Dr. Bethune is widely credited with unifying this group – with its factions, differences of opinion, and struggles over resources – and advancing their agenda strategically, using her relationship with the White House to their advantage regularly.
As Dr. Bethune gained prominence as a voice for Black children and an advocate for Black education, she became sought after for her input on issues of child welfare, education, and the Black community. Ultimately, Dr. Bethune would go on to advise five Presidents, and formally serve in both the Roosevelt and Coolidge administrations.
After her time with the NYA, Bethune would go on to co-found the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) in 1944. As a representative from the NAACP, Bethune would also be the sole African American woman on the US delegation present for the creation of the United Nations charter in 1945. After her death in 1955, she would receive multiple posthumous awards and accolades - and her lifelong commitment to equality echoes across multiple agencies and programs.
The monument is the first statue erected on public land in Washington, D.C. to honor an African American woman. The statue features an elderly Mrs. Bethune handing a copy of her legacy to two young black children. Mrs. Bethune is supporting herself by a cane given to her by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The statue was unveiled on the anniversary of her 99th birthday, July 10, 1974, before a crowd of over 18,000 people. The funds for the monument were raised by the National Council of Negro Women, the organization Mrs. Bethune founded in 1935.
Throughout her storied career, Dr. Bethune was often the only woman, and almost always the only Black woman, in the room.
“In all that great group,” she said, “I felt a sense of being quite alone...so while I sip tea in the brilliance of the White House, my heart reaches out to the delta land and the bottom land. I know why I must be here, must go to tea at the White House. To remind them always that we belong here, we are part of this America.” (Watts, 228).
For more, make sure you check out:
Bethune’s work at the National Youth Administration https://rediscovering-black-history.blogs.archives.gov/2014/03/25/providing-a-new-deal-for-young-black-women/
Bethune’s own words: https://www.amazon.com/Mary-McLeod-Bethune-Building-Selected/dp/025321503X
Watts, Jill. The Black Cabinet: the Untold Story of African Americans and Politics during the Age of Roosevelt. Grove Press, 2020.