NewsScan Daily, 8 February 2000 ("Above The Fold") (fwd)

From: edequity@phoenix.edc.org
Date: Thu Feb 10 2000 - 17:14:35 EST

  • Next message: edequity@phoenix.edc.org: "Today in Herstory"

    Dear edequity members,
    Some of you may be interested in the honorary subscriber listed in the
    NewsScan Daily today...Mary McLeod Bethune. I forwarded it to our middle
    school humanities teacher for Women's history week...
    hemphill <hemphill@teleport.com>
    ==================
    HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: MARY McLEOD BETHUNE
           Today's Honorary subscriber is the American educator turned social
    reformer, Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955). The youngest of 17 children of
    former slaves, as a child growing up in South Carolina she attended the
    local free school and won a scholarship to Scotia Seminary in North
    Carolina, eventually graduating from Moody Bible Institute, Chicago. Her
    initial intention was to become a missionary teacher in Africa, but she
    abandoned this goal upon learning that as a black woman she would be denied
    that opportunity. Instead she taught at a number of black colleges in the
    U.S. before moving to Florida in 1899 to open her own mission school. In
    1904 she founded the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute, which
    eventually grew to become in 1929 the Bethune-Cookman College.
           Despite the obvious burdens she experienced in building her
    institute
    into a large and prosperous school, Mary Bethune found time and energy to
    organize and inspire thousands of black women to become involved in social
    and political issues such as segregation, discrimination, and international
    relations. Under her leadership these women were mobilized to form the
    National Association of Colored Women and the National Council of Negro
    Women. Her work with these organizations brought her to the attention of
    Eleanor Roosevelt, who recruited her as a voice for black concerns in the
    Roosevelt administration.
           In 1935, Bethune was appointed an adviser to the National Youth
    Organization, an agency to help young people find work during the
    Depression
    and World War II. In 1942, she retired as president of Bethune-Cookman
    College and went to Washington as adviser to the president on minority
    affairs and director of the Division of Negro Affairs within the National
    Youth Administration. While in Washington she founded the Federal Council
    on Negro Affairs, a group known informally as the "black cabinet" and made
    up of blacks in government who sought to generate support for the New Deal
    among the black population while working to generate support within the
    government for anti-discrimination policies.
              Through her efforts to promote full citizenship rights for all
    African-Americans and her feminist perspective, Mary McLeod Bethune came to
    symbolize the dual role black women played as activists for the rights of
    blacks and women. At the time of her death Mary McLeod Bethune was
    generally
    acknowledged to be the most influential black woman of her day.

    See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0064461688/newsscancom/ for an
    inspirational biography written for young children. (We donate all revenue
    received from our book recommendations to literacy action progams.)

    NSD: PASS IT ON! Go to http://www.newsscan.com/newsscan/newscup.html

    HTML VERSION: To subscribe to the HTML version of NewsScan Daily, send mail
      to: NewsScan-html@NewsScan.com with 'subscribe' in the subject line.
    ==========================
    Copyright 2000. NewsScan Daily (R) is a publication of NewsScan.com Inc.
    ************************************************************



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Feb 10 2000 - 17:16:25 EST