Mary McLeod Bethune: Women-Centered Black Activism for Social and Civil Rights

in the early 1890s, when Mary Church Terrell spoke at the National Woman Suffrage Association, she pointed to the intersectional complexity of the African American women's mission: “A white woman has only one handicap to overcome—a great one, true, her sex; a colored woman faces two—her sex and race. A colored man has only one—that of race” (Jones 3). 1 Mary McLeod Bethune (1875–1955) was only a teen when Terrell spoke those words. She could have added a third handicap to overcome: that of poverty. However, she grew into an influential Black leader as a college president, and with Terrell's mentorship, became a national women's club leader and the first Black woman to lead a federal division in Washington. Bethune's lifelong political and educational work was primarily for and with Black women. 2 The school she started for African American girls became a center and training ground for Black political activism (Hanson 57) and eventually grew into Bethune-Cookman University. As an advocate for civil rights for African Americans, Bethune promoted government-protected programs that protected economic and social well-being, generally called “social rights. ” Bethune was the president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), serving from 1924 to 1928, and, in 1935, founded the National Council of Negro Women. She was an officer in the NAACP and participated in many feminist groups, such as the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. In the 1930s, Bethune turned to legal, legislative, and policy-based activism. Bethune led the African American women's movement to become a political lobbying force and a core part of FDR's New Deal, working for integration, equity, and interracial cooperation. She was the first director of the Division of Negro Affairs in the federal National Youth Administration, becoming the highest-paid African American in the 1930s in the federal government. Although her fight against segregation in social programs in FDR's administration was unsuccessful, she convinced FDR that an African American should lead any government program designed to serve African Americans, resulting in more African Americans in leadership positions in Washington. Bethune's creation of a group called FDR's “Black Cabinet” was part of her work to support other African Americans in government. As a vice president of the NAACP, she was the only woman of color selected by President Truman to participate in the founding of the United Nations. This essay does several things. First, it positions Bethune in the feminist pragmatist dialogue by demonstrating her core pragmatist and feminist philosophies. Secondly, it frames the feminist pragmatist political history of the early twentieth century as a movement toward social rights, with Bethune as part of that development. Bethune's civil rights activism adds an essential dimension to the fifty-year story of feminist pragmatist judicial and legislative activism for social rights. Third, it points to experiential relational power as a force in political change, both the lateral relationships in African American women's clubs and the more hierarchical relationships that Bethune developed with Eleanor and President Roosevelt. I begin with a short introduction to her impressive life. While wealth, education, and social class may have enabled some Black women like Terrell, Fannie Barrier Williams, and Anna Julia Cooper to approach post-Reconstruction social change with a progressive optimism, Bethune had none of those early advantages. She did not come from an upper- or middle-class background and was not light-skinned like Terrell or Williams. 3 She was born and raised in South Carolina, one of seventeen children who grew up working in the fields on the family farm. Her parents and some of her older siblings were former enslaved people. Much of Bethune's lifelong sense of efficacy came from her pride in her African heritage, which was instilled in her by her mother, who told her that she was a descendant of African royalty. This history gave her a sense of dignity and strength. 4Because of Jim Crow segregation, there was no school she could attend in her early years. When she was 11, a Presbyterian mission school opened for African Americans several miles away. Her family could only afford to send one child, so on the weekends, Bethune taught her siblings and the neighbor children what she learned. After four years, she was awarded a scholarship to attend Scotia Seminary in Concord, North Carolina. Scotia's mission was to educate future teachers and social workers. They offered a liberal education in Greek, Latin, English, social sciences, and math, along with training in gardening and homemaking (Perkins 31). She then attended Moody Bible School in Chicago, hoping to be sent to Africa as a teacher. Instead, she returned to South Carolina and then was sent as a teacher to Georgia before marrying and moving to Florida. In 1904, newly separated from her husband and with a small child, she moved to Daytona Beach, Florida, with only 1. 50 in her pocket, hoping to start a school there. With the support of the local Black community, Bethune founded the Florida Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls, opening her doors with five students. Perhaps modeled after some aspects of her education, the school's housekeeping, gardening, and maintenance work was performed by the students. Without public funding in its first years, the school depended on tuition and donations, which Bethune sought primarily from the local white women's clubs and wealthy industrialists with winter homes in Florida. The curriculum at Daytona Normal combined elements from her own liberal education with Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee approach, which focused on employable skills like the manual arts, agricultural training, and domestic skills (Perkins 30; Bethune, “Clarifying” 12; Parker 77). A curriculum focused on practical and vocational skills was more likely to appeal to industrialists and employers, many of whom she invited to be on the Board of Directors. 5Somewhat reminiscent of Hull House, Bethune's school quickly became a center and training ground for Black political activism (Hanson 57). She used the school space to unite Black ministers and activists to focus on community improvement (Robertson 38). One of her projects was to increase African American voting, a dangerous move in the South. In defiance of the Ku Klux Klan, she taught adults to pass the required literacy tests and then raised money to pay the poll taxes that kept many African Americans from voting. When the KKK rode into the school on horseback, intending to set the buildings on fire, Bethune stood bravely in the middle of the school campus with her arms crossed. The KKK did not destroy the buildings, and the next day Bethune led hundreds of Black women to the polls to vote (Hanson 78–79). Women's clubs emerged in the late 1800s as powerful feminist social and political forces among white and Black women. Although, after a struggle, some white women's clubs admitted African American women, their agendas did not usually reflect the same priorities as African American clubs. The backlash of racism and corresponding reversals of civil rights in the late nineteenth century after Reconstruction made social progress movements among African Americans more urgent and challenging than similar movements of their white colleagues. African American women fought for fundamental constitutional civil rights while continuing to advocate for policies promoting social and economic rights like safe housing, education, and equitable working conditions. Their work for civil and social rights was potentially dangerous, sometimes, like in Bethune's case, requiring them to stand against the KKK and face the ever-present threat of lynching. Like Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, and other feminist pragmatists who drew on women's clubs to support their reform programs, Bethune utilized relationships she developed in regional and national clubs to build women-centered networks that she could draw on for social and political advocacy and funding for her school. Bethune's early teaching mentor had introduced her to the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), the Southeastern Federation of Women's Clubs, and the YWCA. After founding her school, Bethune continued to develop those relationships. At a meeting of the NACW in 1912, Bethune asked for a chance to speak about her school and spoke with “such impassioned eloquence” that the NACW took up a collection for the school (Preston 22–23, 148n7). Mary Church Terrell, who Bethune later called one of the nation's “beacon lights” (Preston 27), was a mentor for Bethune, helping her become a significant leader in African American women's clubs. These connections enabled her to eventually enlist the backing of both Margaret and Booker T. Washington and the Tuskegee Institute for her school. Margaret Murray Washington, a women's club leader, visited Bethune's school in 1915 (Hanson 95). Tuskegee representatives had visited much earlier (without providing funding at that early point). Bethune continuously expanded her influence through increasing networks of women—particularly women of color—locally, nationally, and internationally. She was elected president of the Florida Federation of Colored Women's Clubs in 1917, serving until 1924. From 1920 to 1925, she was also president of the twelve-state Southeastern Federation of Colored Women's Clubs and the president of the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools in 1923. Her passion, vision, and administrative skills united people and helped coalesce groups around a mission. In the astonishing number of organizations, clubs, and boards she worked with, she demonstrated organizational skills, writing bylaws, raising funds, and networking among members and the larger communities. She was also often a participant in the interracial teas and garden parties that Black women used to promote social relationships between Black and white women, such as those who were internationally minded peace advocates (Plastas 175). In 1924, she defeated Ida B. Wells-Barnett to become president of the influential NACW. She wanted to reframe its work toward systemic political change. While some, like Terrell, saw the NACW as a support network, working to develop community services like those offered in settlement houses, Bethune wanted the NACW to act like a national political lobby. Not everyone agreed; some, like Terrell, saw racial uplift as community-based, not political. Although Bethune did not abandon internal racial uplift as a goal for African Americans, she thought Black women's clubs should focus on changing institutions and laws. In 1928, Bethune urged the NACW membership to “forget everything that looks like individualism” to build community and political structures that supported Black women everywhere (Hanson 107). During the 1930s Depression, Bethune continued to focus away from individual and voluntary social programs to fight for equitable political and governmental policies. 6 She no longer believed that changing individual behavior or “uplifting” women was adequate for improving the lives of African Americans. Instead, her goal became laws and policies that protected individual, civil, and social rights, including the basic protections of well-being. She turned to changes in federal policy to fulfill the promises of an equitable democracy, eventually becoming a powerful force for more comprehensive systemic changes in the FDR administration. In 1935, she founded a new organization, the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), initially incorporating twenty-eight professional, religious, and educational women groups. Like the NACW, the NCNW served as an umbrella body for African American women's associations, but unlike the NACW, political advocacy was among its primary goals. Although mainly national, it also reached out internationally. This part of their mission enacted Bethune's vision, first articulated in her 1926 “President's Address” at the NACW, to draw attention to the “color question belting the world, colonial domination. . . political freedoms and territorial problems of governments” (McCluskey and Smith 161). Bethune scholars often comment on her pragmatism, referring to her ability to make decisions and take action even when likely outcomes were not ideal (Smith 105; Linsin 39–40; Perkins 34). McCluskey notes that any analysis of Bethune's ideological framework must include her “skills in the politics of pragmatism” (McCluskey 15). Although some authors used the term “pragmatism” nontechnically, many of Bethune's philosophies fit with early feminist, pragmatist, and progressive principles. For example, adopting a progressive stance, she said: “The time has come when we must believe in progress as something more than just a creed. ”7 Her meliorism is obvious. Even during the nadir of race relations, she approached problems with hopeful optimism about progress, a perspective she blended with her religious faith. Bethune's pragmatism allowed her to adopt emancipatory and flexible perspectives and to change her views over time as the context and conditions changed. She did not sacrifice current opportunities for idealized future goals. She took what was possible and moved forward while considering her future goals. She could pivot based on the context, for example, supporting the Republicans in the 1920s but becoming a Democrat when she saw the potential impact of FDR's programs. In the 1930s, she continued to advocate for racial integration while managing a racially segregated governmental unit, and she worked closely with a president who was not willing to challenge Jim Crow policies. These pivots have been criticized as accommodation rather than taking a firm stand for radical progressive reform. 8 While these approaches could appear contradictory, a closer look reveals that she always acted within the given possibilities of context and time. She was able to handle ambiguity, sometimes holding competing values and what appeared to be contradictory perspectives. As Christopher Linsin says, Bethune's philosophy was one of “integrated autonomy”; she advocated separate autonomy and leadership for Blacks while working toward full economic and social integration (Linsin 20). She urged Blacks to think independently and cooperatively, saying, “White people have had to do our thinking long enough. We no longer want them to think for us but with us” (Hanson 140). As an educational leader, Bethune's pragmatist refusal to adopt an either/or dualism in her educational philosophy enabled her to serve as a mediator and consensus builder. She was a colleague of both Booker T. Washington and Du Bois, who advocated differing philosophies of education. Washington was known for taking a vocational skills-based approach but was sometimes criticized for perpetuating a caste system. Du Bois rejected Washington's Tuskegee model, asking in 1902 whether “the industrial school is the final and sufficient answer in the training of the Negro race. ” Instead, DuBois advocated for access to higher education for what he called the “talented tenth. ” He said, “The foundations of knowledge in this race, as in others, must be sunk deep in the college and university if we would build a solid, permanent structure” (Du Bois 84). As her Daytona school grew and moved toward a collegiate model, Bethune came to agree with Du Bois that an option for higher education should be provided for the finest minds. She had always incorporated liberal in the curriculum while continuing to support industrial and practical the Bethune believed that Washington's race and were no longer sufficient systemic change. As an influential leader in Black education, she wanted in education and that serve to the toward the to the racial in Perkins Her 1926 “A of for Negro continued to advocate domestic skills of and but also for education that supported a (McCluskey and Smith She wanted an education that would African American women to become community In the Daytona Institute with the becoming the Bethune-Cookman education for and Bethune said, should an for a that work and (Perkins director of the Division of Negro Affairs in the National Youth in the 1930s, Bethune continued to her ability to between either/or perspectives about education. In a on she advocated vocational projects while She called for to these people with their. . . to these that must have to on In the same she said: more with and in McCluskey and Smith She spoke with as the president of the Bethune-Cookman and as one who federal educational funding for African American Terrell, Bethune was influential in the in the In 1928, President invited her to attend the Her and leadership in these her national and Terrell, her social and political led her to support the in the The she became in the more she of democracy, integration, and interracial cooperation. She believed American should individual rights, civil rights, and social the FDR the government was toward social rights after of feminist pragmatist political activism Although the term “social was only used by feminist pragmatists like Florence Kelley, it to the rights to safe working work adequate and social and on These rights were later articulated at the by Eleanor and then in a United the International on and Bethune's priorities in the 1930s civil and social rights for African had Eleanor at a for national women's club in and a and an This was an for Bethune as she turned her attention to change at the governmental In 1935, Bethune her first governmental as a of the of the National Youth becoming the Black When FDR the creation of the Division of Negro Affairs in the he Bethune the of the division (Hanson This made Bethune the highest-paid African American woman in the federal in a she could New funding toward educational and for African Americans. She that the pay African American and white the same which was in New In the Bethune that was more to for African Americans during the She also for the creation of a Negro which Her programs eventually Black pragmatism served her in government While a advocate for integration, she the of segregation in the Division of Negro She was willing to these and move forward an ideal Her ability to a third enabled her to serve as a mediator and a between groups. In those early of the New Deal, she supported FDR and even he to challenge She continued to work the to promote African American such as segregated services with the that African Americans must lead those This and her advocacy of other African American more people of color into the government. to the of the National Youth in she said, does not white or white it is for to as and into the program of the as the Negro (Hanson Bethune also used her and with the to advocate for African American in federal including for African American Bethune African American in her for an meeting called the Council on Negro Affairs called the “Black The of their first meeting their one of which was to with other and their Bethune said, by thinking and We must think about She the and of of (McCluskey and Smith The then and to work and This group and grew to include Black of other national groups, like the Bethune often their and to Eleanor or to used a of reform earlier in the century by social progressive the as as and then advocate for Although, unlike some of her feminist pragmatist she did she on as a for She national on African American such as the on of the Negro and Negro one African Americans from over the to racial and draw up a set of to forward to Eleanor attended the first in at Bethune's of the were the a of the in an opening the with a powerful on the Negro (McCluskey and Smith After the Bethune sent a long to out the African American perspective on the was a She called on FDR to some if he continued support from the African American is in McCluskey and Smith Bethune appeared that she was for the African American people in her to had She Black political which while training future of Black political In she was elected vice president of the National Association for the of Colored During FDR her to the that the Women's and she worked to that Black women had a in the After FDR's Truman invited her to become the only African American woman at the founding of the United in Her at this her to women of Bethune's relational pragmatism, combined with the work of other African Americans of her a of political even in a political In her work a for the