Gertrude Elion = Women's History Month - 31

As you read about Gertrude Elion's life, and the immense struggles created by educational institutions against women, consider what pursuits are still out of reach for women. 

Wikipedia offers this:

Gertrude "Trudy" Belle Elion (January 23, 1918 – February 21, 1999) was an American biochemist and pharmacologist. In 1988 Elion received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with George H. Hitchings and Sir James Black for discoveries of "important new principles of drug treatment".  Elion was the fifth female Nobel laureate in Medicine and the ninth in science in general, and one of only a handful of laureates without a doctoral degree. She was the only woman honored with a Nobel Prize that year. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1990, a member of the Institute of Medicine in 1991 and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences also in 1991.

This new method focused on understanding the target of the drug rather than simply using trial-and-error. Her work led to the creation of the anti-retroviral drug AZT, which was the first drug widely used against AIDS. Her well known works also include the development of the first immunosuppressive drug, azathioprine, used to fight rejection in organ transplants, and the first successful antiviral drug, acyclovir (ACV), used in the treatment of herpes infection.

She was Phi Beta Kappa at Hunter College, which she was able to attend for free due to her grades, graduating summa cum laude in 1937 with a degree in chemistry. 

Eventually, she saved up enough money to attend New York University and she earned her M.Sc. in 1941, while working as a high school teacher during the day. 

In an interview after receiving her Nobel Prize, she stated that she believed the sole reason she was able to further her education as a young female was because she was able to attend Hunter College for free. Her fifteen financial aid applications for graduate school were turned down due to gender bias, so she enrolled in a secretarial school, where she attended only six weeks before she found a job.

^{... she worked as a food quality supervisor at A&P supermarkets, and for a food lab in New York, testing the acidity of pickles and the color of egg yolk going into mayonnaise. She moved to a position at Johnson & Johnson that she hoped would be more promising, but ultimately involved testing the strength of sutures.} 

^{In 1944, she left to work as an assistant to George H. Hitchings at the Burroughs-Wellcome pharmaceutical company (now GlaxoSmithKline) in Tuckahoe, New York.} 

^{Hitchings was using a new way of developing drugs, by intentionally imitating natural compounds instead of through trial and error. Specifically, he was interested in synthesizing antagonists to nucleic acid derivatives, with the goal that these antagonists would integrate into biological pathways. He believed that if he could trick cancer cells into accepting artificial compounds for their growth, they could be destroyed without also destroying normal cells.  Elion synthesized anti-metabolites of purines, and in 1950, she developed the anti-cancer drugs tioguanine and mercaptopurine.}

^{She pursued graduate studies at night school at New York University Tandon School of Engineering (then Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute), but after several years of long-range commuting, she was informed that she would no longer be able to continue her doctorate on a part-time basis, but would need to give up her job and go to school full-time. Elion made a critical decision in her life, and stayed with her job and give up the pursuit of her doctorate. She never obtained a formal Ph.D., but was later awarded an honorary Ph.D. from New York University Tandon School of Engineering (then Polytechnic University of New York) in 1989 and an honorary S.D. degree from Harvard University in 1998.}

While Elion had many jobs to support herself and put herself through school, Elion had also worked for the National Cancer Institute, American Association for Cancer Research, and World Health Organization, among other organizations. From 1967 to 1983, she was the Head of the Department of Experimental Therapy for Burroughs Wellcome. She officially retired from Burroughs Wellcome in 1983.

She was affiliated with Duke University as Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology and of Experimental Medicine from 1971 to 1983 and Research Professor from 1983 to 1999. During her time at Duke, she focused on mentoring medical and graduate students. She published more than 25 papers with the students she mentored at Duke.

Even after her retirement from Burroughs Wellcome, Gertrude continued almost full time work at the lab. She played a significant role in the development of AZT, one of the first drugs used to treat HIV and AIDS. She also was crucial in the development of Nelarabine, which she worked on until her death in 1999.

Source: Wikipedia.

Over the course of her career, Elion developed drugs to treat leukemia, malaria, herpes, and AIDS. She won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1988.

Just think of how many lives she may have helped save.

Maya Angelou - Women's History Month - 30

 "My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness. Continue to allow humor to lighten the burden of your tender heart."--Maya Angelou

"Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.

MAYA ANGELOU "Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.  -Maya Angelou, poet (1928-2014) “Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence. Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.”~Maya Angelou From: “Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now” Photo by Chris Felver . Once again I am in awe of a powerful talented woman. I could quote her all day! I read her first autobiography (of 7) I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) her life up to the age of 17, when it was first published. Her awards are many, as well as more than 50 honorary doctorates.  From Wikipedia: She was born...   Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014); an American memoirist, popular poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years   She became a poet and writer after a string of odd jobs during her young adulthood. These included fry cook, sex worker, nightclub performer, Porgy and Bess cast member, Southern Christian Leadership Conference coordinator, and correspondent in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa.    Angelou worked as a composer, co-writing for singer Roberta Flack, and composing movie scores. She wrote articles, short stories, TV scripts, documentaries, autobiographies, and poetry. She produced plays and was named visiting professor at several colleges and universities. In a 1995 interview she said:  I wrote about my experiences because I thought too many people tell young folks, "I never did anything wrong. Who, Moi? – never I. I have no skeletons in my closet. In fact, I have no closet." They lie like that and then young people find themselves in situations and they think, "Damn I must be a pretty bad guy. My mom or dad never did anything wrong." They can't forgive themselves and go on with their lives.   "SHE [ANGELOU] HAD ACCOMPLISHED MORE THAN MANY ARTISTS HOPE TO ACHIEVE IN A LIFETIME." (From: Gillespie, Marcia Ann, Rosa Johnson Butler, and Richard A. Long. (2008). Maya Angelou: A Glorious Celebration. New York: Random House) If you have never heard her in an interview, or reciting one of her poems, you've missed a great vocal performance. She holds our interest with pauses placed critically, and her enunciation has no country.     Though I haven't added this First Lady to our Women's History month, she certainly was on the short list. So I'll gladly sneak her in with this poster. If you can't enlarge it enough, the quoted sayings are by (L to R) Frida Kahlo, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Michelle Obama, and Maya Angelou

Greta Thunberg, Women's History Month - She's making history - 29

 "I have Asperger's and that means I'm different from the norm."

At school I was always alone, without friends, I sat in a corner.

Still at home sick eating disorder

It's all gone now, because I figured out where my path is.

I’m not the angry little girl who screams in front of world leaders, I’m not how some media portray me to be, I’m a shy, studious girl, a nerd who cares about the present and future of the Planet and therefore my own.

I have found purpose in a world that often seems empty and meaningless to so many people. When haters get offended by your looks and difference, it means they don't know where to go. And you know you're winning.”

Greta Thunberg

Source: Women Hold Up Half The Sky a group on Facebook

Quote:

"To sin by silence, when we should protest, makes cowards out of men."

by  Ella Wheeler Wilcox, poet.

MC Richards- Women's History Month -28

 

My mentor to become a potter, Mary Carolyn Richards

 We had a discussion group (a take-off from a reading group) which watched in 3 parts over 3 months, this wonderful video about MC.

Paulus Berensohn was interviewed on the video about M. C. Richards' life.

Her "acting painting" for the camera when the video was being made.

Wikipedia says this about her life:
Mary Caroline Richards (July 13, 1916, Weiser, Idaho – September 10, 1999, Kimberton, Pennsylvania) was an American poet, potter, and writer best known for her book Centering: in Pottery, Poetry and the Person.^[1] Educated at Reed College, in Portland, Oregon, and at the University of California at Berkeley, she taught English at the Central Washington College of Education and the University of Chicago, but in 1945 became a faculty member of the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina where she continued to teach until the end of the summer session in 1951.^[2] It was her teaching experience and growth as an artist while at Black Mountain College that prepared the foundation for most of her work in life, both as an educator and creator. Later in life, she discovered the work of Rudolf Steiner and lived the last part of her life at a Camphill Village in Kimberton, PA. In 1985, while living at the Kimberton Camphill Village she began teaching workshops with Matthew Fox at the University of Creation Spirituality in Oakland, CA during the winter months. Mary Caroline Richards died in 1999 in Kimberton, PA^;

And here's probably more information which I posted several years ago.

M. C. Richards and me...

"Centering, In the Art of Pottery Poetry and Person."

"The Crossing Point, Selected Talks and Writings"


Mary Caroline Richards
(1916 - 1999)

A poet, potter, teacher, and mystical philosopher who said that all of her art was "a celebration of the numinous," M.C. Richards often remarked, "We live in the universe, not just on Maple Avenue." Supremely self-confident, renowned for her warrior personality, she attributed much of her lifelong fearlessness to her mother's wisdom. When she was an impressionable eight-year-old, for example, a distraught neighbor came running to M.C.'s mother to tell her that M.C. had climbed up on the roof and was perched precariously at the edge. Her mother went out and called up to her daughter, "Oh, M.C., you look so beautiful up there all silhouetted against the sky.

Mary Caroline Richards was born in Weiser, Idaho, in 1916 and reared in Portland, OR. 

She received a doctorate in English from the University of California at Berkeley in the 1940s, when few women received more than a high-school education, and later taught at the innovative Black Mountain College and other universities. She left two marriages and a number of unsatisfactory love relationships and started a new career at the age of seventy by joining the faculty of Matthew Fox's Institute for Culture and Creation Spirituality. As a seventieth birthday gift to herself, she had her ears pierced.   -- Mary Ford-Grabowsky

My life was definitely impacted by M.C. Richards.  In the 1970's I read "Centering, In the Art of Pottery, Poetry and Person."  The book, which became an underground classic, pulled together ideas about perception, craft, education, creativity, religion and spirituality, arguing for the richness of daily experience if carefully attended to, and the creativity of the average person. ''Poets are not the only poets,'' Ms. Richards wrote.

At that time I was not yet a potter.  I was a "hippie".  I was willing to step into the unknown, several times actually.  My boyfriend, Charlie, and I opened a co-op store in Tallahassee, naming it "Pottery, Poetry and Person." after M.C.'s book title.  Another friend, Martha, was the co-op sponsor of the book portion of the store, a loft full of great new age reading including overstuffed chairs in which to sit and read.  No big box book stores had thought of doing that in 1976 yet.  My share of the co-op was some pen & ink cards and calendars, and doing most of the hands on managing/sitting there.  Other arts and crafts were also represented, leather making, silk flower arranging, batik painting on cloth, wood inlay, watercolors. 

Charlie taught at the local alternative high school.  He learned how to make pottery, bought a wheel and some kilns, and we started making pottery there in the back of the store. We invited some local potters/teachers to join the co-op.  I watched what Charlie did, and tried the same.   I even started doing demonstrations at the local fairs, as well as carrying pottery to sell there.  It was a great thing to do in the 70's in Florida.   I still have a couple of bowls that Charlie and I made...he threw them, I glazed them. One plate I made from beginning to end is carved in a Native American design, and is still in my collection also.  (It is not at all in a style MC would have promoted, being very tight compared to her organic flowing style).

Fast forward to when I finally decided to become a "real artist" and go to the University of Florida in the 80's, studying under Phil Ward and Nan Smith to learn everything I didn't know about ceramics.  There was a lot.  But I also wrote to M. C. Richards (via her publisher probably) and told her how she had influenced my life.  She actually wrote me back.  I didn't understand that a famous woman, who had published two books, could write a student on notebook paper, but I was so excited, I carried her letter folded in my pocket of my coat.  I rode (as most students do) a bike around campus.  Someplace or another, the letter fell out.  But M.C. never fell out of the special place she holds in my heart.

M. C. Richards also planted the seed that led me to live in Black Mountain, NC from 2007 to present. 

As you may already know, after I got that BFA in ceramics, I stayed in school to get an M.Ed. and Ed.S. in counseling...and found that some of the ideas being promoted for counselors still echoed those that were spoken of in "Centering."  M.C. had taught at Black Mountain College, which closed its doors back in the 50's, but not before impacting the arts and education. 

Black Mountain College was the college where performing and visual artists and John Cage engaged in a "Happening" in 1950, well before it happened again in 1968 when I was briefly an art student in The Hartford Art School in Connecticut.  (I also was the receptionist there, thinking myself less talented and more inclined to be earning an income). 

From 1933 to 1941, Black Mountain College was located at the YMCA Blue Ridge Assembly. Photo: Creative Commons. 

It's interesting that today I can see this building's red roof through the wintertime trees from my current apartment across the valley.

Black Mountain College's second campus on Lake Eden from 1941 to 1957, is now part of Camp Rockmont, a summer camp for boys. There is one building still standing which was part of the college campus.

Black Mountain College was a short-lived laboratory for innovative teaching and art whose faculty and students included Josef and Anni Albers, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, David Tudor, Robert Rauschenberg and Charles Olson. They had workshops where everyone shared making pinch pots, exploring words in creativity and "brain storming."  Buckminster Fuller, (grand-nephew of Margaret Fuller, another genius) tried out his first geodesic dome there, and returned to make a more successful one than the original one of venetian blind slats.

For more information on M.C. Richards at Black Mountain College, look at her Wikepedia page:

M.C. Richards also is the subject of a biographical movie "The Fire Within" taken at her home in PA where she gave workshops, painted, and lived in an intentional community .Camphill Village is an agricultural community in Kimberton, Pa. where she had lived since 1984. (The Black Mountain Library owns a copy of this film available to be checked out.)

 Here's the link for "The Fire Within" film.

The Fire Within is a portrait of a remarkable woman whose greatest artistic ability was perhaps to find the artist in others (despite her own impressive output as a writer, painter and potter). Most of the film centers on Richards' last years, including footage of her as she taught, wrote and worked with many special-needs adults at a Camphill Village in Pennsylvania; Richards touched the creative spark in them while working on her own art at the same time. The film offers us a striking picture of a woman who was as down-to-earth and forthright as they come, but who was likewise a dreamy visionary. She was a contradiction, and a fascinating one.  (movie review by Ken Hanke | 04/28/2004, Mountain Xpress)

Cover art for film

M. C.'s pottery and painting (like her prose and poetry) is loose, organic, speaks of the creativity rather than the polish, and is definitely inspired.  She taught me the value of process rather than product...in everything.  That was fundamental in counseling as well.  I may have tried writing poetry also, but am willing to appreciate that written by others.

My youngest son, the potter, went to a Waldorf school for kindergarden, which was based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner.  I just realized that MC wrote the book that I read about him also!
Toward Wholeness: Rudolf Steiner Education in America.

And another influence of MC...when I interviewed at one of the rehabilitation centers where I counseled, I impressed the director by describing the organic crossing point in all plants (see below) as MC had taught.  Whether a person or plant, we all have almost microscopic points where change happens...in a plant from root to stem as the cells have different purposes...in a person when change becomes healthy rather than unhealthy for the organism.

It's all about Centering.

------------------------------------------------
Seeing with Your Inner Eye

Picture in your inner eye, your inner sight, four avocado seeds on the window sill. Three are suspended in a glass of water and have sprouted. One is still dry and papery and brown. Each of the sprouting seeds has its own character. One has two long roots, like two rubbery legs folding around each other in the bottom of the glass. Out of the top rises a cluster of tiny seedling leaves, and surprisingly, on this one, these leaves are white -- little tight white albino avocado seedling leaves, coming out of that big hard seed knob. Another has one short straight root and one straight shoot bearing green leaves at the top. The third has neither root nor shoot, but the whole seed has been split open by a thrust from inside, and the two halves shoved apart by the germinating seed force -- that little bunch of stuff, big as the end of your pinkie, shoving those big doors aside like a tiny Samson. It is a wonderful sight. And now let us look at the fourth seed, dry and papery and brown, nothing showing on the outside. But within are a life force and a living plantness which we cannot see with our ordinary eyes. If we are to behold the wrinkled old seed in truth, we have to behold it with imagination, with our inner eye. Only with the inner eye of imagination can we see inner forms of Being and Becoming. In this lifeless-looking seed there is a germinating center, totally alive and totally invisible.

-- from The Crossing Point
Selected Talks and Writings

Beatrix Potter - Women's History Month -27

Wikipedia offers this:

Helen Beatrix Potter:  (28 July 1866 – 22 December 1943) was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist. She is best known for her children's books featuring animals, such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit, which was her first published work in 1902. Her books, including 23 Tales, have sold more than 250 million copies. Potter was also a pioneer of merchandising—in 1903, Peter Rabbit was the first fictional character to be made into a patented stuffed toy, making him the oldest licensed character.

Beatrix Potter did not have many friends as a child, but she had lots of animals. She and her brother sneaked a rotating cast of pets into their nursery, including snakes, salamanders, lizards, rabbits, frogs, and a fat hedgehog. As a young adult, she invented narratives about her pets, filling letters to the children of friends with their adventures.

I wonder if British children have more chance of memories of her books and her wonderful illustrations than American ones. Her art and stories were among the early children's literature in my home.

Wikipedia continues:

Born into an upper-middle-class household, Potter was educated by governesses and grew up isolated from other children. She had numerous pets and spent holidays in Scotland and the Lake District, developing a love of landscape, flora and fauna, all of which she closely observed and painted. Potter's study and watercolours of fungi led to her being widely respected in the field of mycology.

Potter wrote over sixty books, with the best known being her twenty-three children's tales. With the proceeds from the books and a legacy from an aunt, in 1905 Potter bought Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey, a village in the Lake District. Over the following decades, she purchased additional farms to preserve the unique hill country landscape. In 1913, at the age of 47, she married William Heelis, a respected local solicitor from Hawkshead.

Potter died of pneumonia and heart disease on 22 December 1943 at her home in Near Sawrey at the age of 77, leaving almost all her property to the National Trust. She is credited with preserving much of the land that now constitutes the Lake District National Park.

Mary McLeod Bethune - Women's History Month - 26

 Pioneering educator Mary McLeod Bethune founded the Daytona Educational and Industrial School for Negro Girls in 1904 with just $1.50. The first class had six students and supplies were so meager when the Florida school was founded that students made ink for pens from elderberry juice and pencils from burned wood. Twenty years later, it became Bethune-Cookman College.

Born in 1875 to former slaves, Bethune also founded the National Council of Negro Women in 1935. She became one of the first African Americans to advise a U.S. President when she served as Franklin D. Roosevelt's Minority Affairs adviser. In 1936, Roosevelt appointed Bethune the director of the National Youth Administration's Division of Negro Affairs, making her the first black woman to head a federal division. Upon her death in 1955, columnist Louis E. Martin honored Bethune's immense impact in touching many lives, stating: "She gave out faith and hope as if they were pills and she some sort of doctor."

THIS IS UPDATED APRIL 10, 2023 by another more extensive post about her on Facebook:

In his 1956 autobiography, titled I Wonder as I Wander, Langston Hughes vividly recalled being invited by Mary Bethune to give a reading at Bethune-Cookman College in 1929.

After the event, Bethune hitched a ride with the young poet back to New York City. In the time of Jim Crow, where Black travelers were required to carry an Automobile Blue Book that listed the way stops in which African Americans were allowed to stop for meals, restrooms, or for sleeping accommodations, Hughes noted that Bethune avoided much of the indignity of segregated facilities along the long road to New York. He said, “Colored people along the eastern seaboard spread a feast and opened their homes wherever Mrs. Bethune passed their way.” In fact, he continued, “chickens, sensing that she was coming, went flying off frantically seeking a hiding place. They knew a heaping platter of southern fried chicken would be made in her honor.”

Such popularity followed Bethune through much of her 60 years of public service. During that time, she wore many hats including educator, community organizer, public policy advisor, public health advocate, advisor to the President of the United States, patriot, and of course mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. All in the service of her relentless pursuit of what she called “unalienable rights of the citizenship for Black Americans.”

Mary McLeod Bethune was born in 1875, number 15 of 17 children of former slaves, during the genesis of Jim Crow and the anti-Black violence that would ultimately plague the South for the duration of her life.

By the time of her birth, Patsy and Samuel McLeod owned a small farm near Mayesville, South Carolina. Deeply religious, they encouraged their curious daughter to attend a mission school where she thrived. The young Mary McLeod became so enthralled with learning that she won a scholarship to continue her studies at Scotia Seminary for Negro Girls in Concord, North Carolina, and spent one year at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois. It was during her time at Scotia and Moody that she developed her philosophy of “female uplift” and her passion for educating girls for leadership in their communities.

In 1898, Mary McLeod married Albertus Bethune and had one son, Albert, in 1899. Her marriage to Albertus was a tumultuous nine years. The family moved from Savannah, Georgia to Palatka, Florida, where she worked in a small mission school. In 1904, the family moved again to Daytona, Florida, where she founded the Daytona Educational and Industrial School for Negro Girls.

A few short years later in 1907, her marriage ended when Albertus abandoned the family and returned to South Carolina. Although they never divorced, Bethune listed herself as a widow in the 1910 census. However, her estranged husband did not die until 1918.

In 1923, Bethune successfully negotiated the merger of her school in Daytona with the Cookman Institute in Jacksonville, Florida. Together, they created the coeducational four year Bethune-Cookman College.

By the time of the merger, she was already a highly respected leader in Black education and among Black women’s clubs. In addition to her school, Bethune worked with the Florida Federation of Colored Women’s clubs to found a home for delinquent Black girls in Ocala, Florida.

She served as president of the Southeastern Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs (1920-25), the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools (1923-24), and she also served as president of the National Association of Colored Women (1924-1928.) Her work on local, regional, and national boards elevated her status as a leader of the Black community. By 1935, she founded the National Council of Negro Women all while continuing to serve as President of Bethune-Cookman College.

Her work with the college, national organizations, and her involvement in political advocacy led to an invitation from President Herbert Hoover to attend a White House conference in 1930. Bethune capitalized on the invitation and left the conference a leading advocate and voice for African Americans in the United States.

During the depths of the Great Depression and the hope of the New Deal, Bethune changed her political party from Republican to Democrat, and whole-heartedly committed herself to the betterment of life for African Americans. In 1931, Bethune was listed tenth on a list of the most outstanding living American women. She used her platform to push an agenda for racial and gender inclusion and championed conventional family life for racial uplift.

Bethune was introduced to the Roosevelts in 1927 and later supported their run for the Presidency. The close friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt was instrumental in gaining regular access to the President. In 1936, President Roosevelt tasked her to join the National Youth Administration and by 1939 she became the Director of Negro Affairs. As Director, Bethune was the highest paid African American in government at the time—with a $5,000 salary. Under her guidance as Director, NYA employed hundreds of thousands of young African American men and women and established a “Negro College and Graduate Fund” that supported over 4,000 students in higher education.

Mary McLeod Bethune, Director of NYA Negro Affairs, 1943. Image from Library of Congress, 2017843211.

Her work with the Roosevelt administration continued when she established and led the informal “Black Cabinet.” The term was coined by Bethune in 1936 and frequently used to describe President Roosevelt’s advisors on issues facing Black communities around the country. The Black Cabinet worked on lynching legislation, attempts to ban poll taxes in the South, welfare, and they worked with New Deal agencies to create jobs for unemployed African Americans.

The cabinet also helped draft the presidential executive orders that ended exclusion of African Americans in armed forces and defense industries during World War II. The influence of the Black Cabinet grew from the unprecedented access of Mary McLeod Bethune to the President and the first lady. The work of the cabinet ultimately laid the political foundation of what would become the modern civil rights movement.

During World War II, she was active in mobilizing support for the war effort among African Americans. She publicly argued for equal opportunity in defense-industry manufacturing and in the armed forces. In a 1941 speech, she eloquently embodied the sentiment of equality:

“Despite the attitude of some employers in refusing to hire Negros to perform needed, skilled services, and despite the denial of the same opportunities and courtesies to our youth in the armed forces of our country, we must not fail America and as Americans, we must not let America fail us.”

She led war bond drives, blood donation drives, and encouraged African American women to staff the canteens that dotted the country. Bethune also served as a special assistant to the Secretary of War for the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. In the role as Special Assistant, she was responsible for helping establish a training school and recruiting Black women for army officer training.

Bethune was named honorary General of the Women’s Army for National Defense. After the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps was converted to active duty status in July 1943, she also served as an advisor for the new Women’s Army Corps. As an advisor to the WAC and WAND, she successfully lobbied President Roosevelt to end segregation in veteran rehabilitation centers and frequently briefed the President on instances of violence against Black service members in the South.

Bethune remained a close advisor to the President until his death. She attended his second, third, and fourth inaugurations, and was delivering a speech in Dallas, Texas, when the news of Roosevelt’s death was announced on April 12, 1945. She immediately flew back to Washington and participated in a nation-wide radio broadcast celebrating President Roosevelt.

After the war, Bethune served as an associate consultant to the US delegation to help draft the United Nations charter. During the negotiations, she focused her efforts on the rights of people living in colonized countries around the world. She left the conference with a deep sense of disappointment, as she did not get the concessions of freedom, human rights, and self-determination that she so deeply desired.

In 1949, she was invited to Haiti to receive the highest Hattian civilian honor, the “Medal of Honor and Merit.” She also traveled to Liberia, as a representative of President Truman, where she received the “Commander of the Order of the Star of Africa,” Liberia’s highest medal. Over the course of her life, she received 11 honorary degrees from Black and white colleges—including Rollins College, where she was the first African American to receive such an honor in the entire South.

Her legacy continued after her death in May 1955. She was the first Black woman to have a national monument dedicated to her in the nation’s capital. Schools, public parks, and streets have been named in her honor. Her greatest legacy remains Bethune-Cookman University, one of the top 50 historically Black colleges and universities in the country.

Historian Audrey Thomas McCluskey summed it up best when she wrote: “Despite the numerous instances of racism shown toward her, and even unsubstantiated charges that she was a Communist sympathizer, Bethune maintained her belief in America.” She possessed unwavering patriotism, a strong sense of racial pride, and even walked with a cane that had once belonged to her friend, President Franklin Roosevelt. McCluskey continued, “She lived almost 80 years, a lifetime that reached from the post-Reconstruction era to the dawn of the modern civil rights movement.”

In her last will and testament from 1955, Dr. Bethune wrote:

“I leave you hope. The Negro’s growth will be great in the years to come. Yesterday our ancestors endured the degradation of slavery, yet they retained their dignity. Today, we direct our strength toward winning a more abundant and secure life. Tomorrow, a new Negro, unhindered by race taboos and shackles, will benefit from more than 330 years of ceaseless struggle. Theirs will be a better world. This I believe with all my heart.”

Mary McLeod Bethune

Sources and Recommended Reading:

McCluskey, Audrey Thomas and Elaine M. Smith. Mary McLeod Bethune: Building a Better World. Indiana University Press, 1999.

Long, Nancy Ann Zrinyi. Mary McLeod Bethune: Her Life and Legacy. Florida Historical Society Press, 2019.

Robertson, Dr. Ashley N. Mary McLeod Bethune in Florida: Bringing Social Justice to the Sunshine State. The History Press, 2015.