Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune
Mary McLeod Bethune
Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune
Born on July 10, 1875 in Mayesville, South Carolina, Mary McLeod Bethune grew up on a cotton farm with her former slave parents, Samuel and Patsy McLeod, and her sixteen siblings. She picked cotton with her family during her childhood, showing an early interest in her education. She attended the only school in Mayesville, a one-room schoolhouse called Trinity Mission School. Her teacher, Emma Jane Wilson, would become her mentor and her benefactor to help her attend two Bible institutes, Scotia Seminary in Concord, North Carolina in 1888-1894, which became Barber-Scotia College, and Dwight Moody’s Institute in Chicago, Illinois, which is now the Moody Bible Institute. She had hopes of becoming a missionary in Africa, but black missionaries were not needed, so she decided to teach.
After marrying Albertus Bethune in 1898 and moving to Savannah, Georgia, then to Palatka, Florida at the prompting of a Presbyterian minister to run a missionary school, Bethune was a social worker and outreached prisoners as well as running the school. By 1904, Bethune decided to open the Daytona Educational and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls in Daytona Beach, Florida. The school continued to flourish and by 1922, there were 300 students. By 1929, the school merged with the Cookman Institute for Men and became Bethune-Cookman College.
