Dr mary mcleod bethune biography

Bethune-Cookman University’s founder, Mary McLeod Bethune, is one of America’s most inspirational daughters. Educator. National civil rights pioneer and activist.

Dr mary mcleod bethune biography for kids

Champion of African American women’s rights and advancement. Advisor to Presidents of the United States. The first in her family not to be born into slavery, she became one of the most influential women of her generation.

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Bethune famously started the Daytona Literary and Industrial Training Institute for Negro Girls on October 3, 1904 with $1.50, vision, an entrepreneurial mindset, resilience and faith in God. She created “pencils” from charred wood, ink from elderberries, and mattresses from moss-stuffed corn sacks.

Her first students were five little girls and her five-year-old son, Albert Jr. In less than two years, the school grew to 250 students. Recognizing the health disparities and lack of medical treatment available to African Americans in Daytona Beach,