Today In Black History.

On this date in 1875 Mary McLeod Bethune was born in Mayesville, South Carolina. She would become a noted educator and founder of Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls in Daytona Beach, Florida in 1904 (now Bethune-Cookman College). In 1935, she would also found the National Council of Negro Women.

She worked for the election of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, and became a member of Roosevelt's "Black Cabinet," sharing the concerns of black people with the Roosevelt administration while spreading Roosevelt's message to blacks, who had traditionally been Republican voters. She was a leader in the Black women's club movement and served as president of the National Association of Colored Women.

Bethune was the only Black woman present at the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1948, representing the NAACP with W.E.B. DuBois and Walter White. Bethune would go on to live until May 18, 1955.

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