MARY MCLEOD BETHUNE

. . . president of Bethune-Cookman College and director of the Division of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration, was the fifteenth child of parents who had been slaves. Her life story begins in Mayesville, South Carolina. Although at one point she was forced to abandon school to pull the plow in place of the old mule that died, Mary was determined to have an education. And with the help of a Quaker benefactor she studied and learned and determined to teach her own race. After marriage to Albertus Bethune, she founded a school at Daytona Beach, Fla., financed by the sale of the sweet-potato pies she baked. Mary fought Jim Crow, poverty and the Ku Klux Klan to maintain her school. As the public schools made primary education available to her race, she dropped those classes to add higher grades. The author writes with moving empathy of a courageous and dedicated life sworn to a humanitarian cause.