After the Civil War, her mother worked for her former owner until she could buy the land on which the family grew cotton. By age nine, Bethune could pick pounds of cotton a day. Bethune benefited from efforts to educate African Americans after the war, graduating in from the Scotia Seminary, a boarding school in North Carolina. But with no church willing to sponsor her as a missionary, Bethune became an educator. While teaching in South Carolina, she married fellow teacher Albertus Bethune, with whom she had a son in In , her marriage ended, and determined to support her son, Bethune opened a boarding school, the Daytona Beach Literary and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls.
It issued its first degrees in A champion of racial and gender equality, Bethune founded many organizations and led voter registration drives after women gained the vote in , risking racist attacks. A friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, in , Bethune became the highest ranking African American woman in government when President Franklin Roosevelt named her director of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration, where she remained until Appointed by President Harry S.
Truman, Bethune was the only woman of color at the founding conference of the United Nations in Her final residence is a National Historic Site. MLA - Michals, Debra. National Women's History Museum, Date accessed. Chicago - Michals, Debra. Mary McLeod Bethune Edited by Debra Michals, PhD Works Cited. Accessed March 3, Flemming, Sheila Y. Accessed August 11, Mccluskey, Audrey T. History in Context. Accessed March 13, Sitkoff, Harvard.
Robert S. Accessed March 25, Weatherford, Doris. How to Cite this page. Additional Resources. Mary McLeod Bethune. New York, N. Holt, Rackham. Garden City, N. Martin, Earl Devine. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University, Smith Eds.
Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, Related Biographies. Abrams is now one of the most prominent African American female politicians in the United States. Abigail Adams was an early advocate for women's rights. A progressive social reformer and activist, Jane Addams was on the frontline of the settlement house movement and was the first American woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize.
