Mary McLeod Bethune

Mary McLeod Bethune was an American educator and civil rights leader who founded a school for Black girls in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1904; it later became Bethune-Cookman University. She also founded the National Council of Negro Women in 1935 and served as director of the National Youth Administration’s Division of Negro Affairs during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency. Through education, political organizing, and federal service, Bethune advanced racial and gender equality until her death in 1955.