WWII, Mary McLeod Bethune at Phyllis Wheatley YWCA, 1943
Mary McLeod Bethune at Phyllis Wheatley YWCA (Young Women's Christian Association) on Rhode Island Avenue, Washington D.C. Mary Jane McLeod Bethune (July 10, 1875 - May 18, 1955) was an American educator and civil rights activist. With the help of benefactors, she attended college hoping to become a missionary in Africa, but instead started a school for African-American girls in Daytona Beach, 1904. It grew and merged with an institute for African-American boys and became the Bethune-Cookman School. She was a member of the National Association of Colored Women and was president of the Florida chapter from 1917-25. In 1930 Herbert Hoover appointed her to the White House Conference on Child Health. In 1932 she worked for the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and became a member of his Black Cabinet, sharing the concerns of black people with the Roosevelt administration while spreading Roosevelt's message to blacks, traditionally Republican voters. In 1935 she founded the National Council of Negro Women in NYC. She died of a heart attack in 1955 at the age of 79. In 1973, Mary McLeod Bethune was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Photographed by Roger Smith for the U.S. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, 1943
