A Woman to Know: Mary McLeod Bethune
Invest in the human soul. Who knows, it could be a diamond in the rough. — Mary McLeod Bethune
(image via Library of Congress)
"She is a power down here," Langston Hughes wrote of Mary McLeod Bethune.
Hughes was traveling through the South on a reading tour, and Mary had volunteered herself as his guide through Florida. Along the way, she showed Langston the school she had founded for black women, which would later become Bethune-Cookman University; the local women's clubs she'd helped start as a member of Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Black Cabinet"; and the multiple voting reources she'd instituted throughout the Southeast, to educate black people on disenfranchisement and voting rights.
Hughes was so impressed by her that in his official recording of the visit, he gave her a new title: "Our First Lady of The Struggle."
Add to your library list:
Mary McLeod Bethune: Building a Better World (Audrey Thomas McCluskey)
Mary McLeod Bethune in Washington, DC (Ida E. Jones)
Mary McLeod Betthune: A Biography (Rackham Holt)
Read more:
Mary McLeod Bethune (National Women's History Museum)
Black women emerge from history's neglect (The New York Times)
Mary McLeod Bethune and Roosevelt's "Black Cabinet" (Smithsonian)
Mary McLeod Bethune (Eleanor Roosevelt Glossary)
Memories of FDR's "Black Cabinet" (The New York Times)
The Extravagant Crowd: Mary McLeod Bethune (Yale University)
"We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible": Black Women School Founders (JSTOR)
Hear more:
The Home of Mary McLeod Bethune (Riches of Florida)
Mary McLeod Bethune (PBS)
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