[3] Honors include the designation of her home in Daytona Beach as a National Historic Landmark[4] and a 1974 statue as "the first monument to honor an African American and a woman in a public park in Washington, D.C."[5] Mary Jane McLeod was born in 1875 in a small log cabin near Mayesville, South Carolina, on a rice and cotton farm in Sumter County.

[11] McLeod recalled noticing racial inequality as a child, observing that the Black community had access to less material wealth and opportunity.

They had a son named Albert McLeod Bethune, Sr. A visiting Presbyterian minister, Coyden Harold Uggams, persuaded the couple to relocate to Palatka, Florida, to run a mission school.

In 1896, she began teaching at Haines Normal and Industrial Institute in Augusta, Georgia, which was part of a Presbyterian mission organized by northern congregations.

As the daughter of former slaves, Laney ran her school with a Christian missionary zeal, emphasizing character and practical education for girls.

[22] After one year at Haines, Bethune was transferred by the Presbyterian mission to the Kindell Institute in Sumter, South Carolina, where she met her husband.

She raised money by selling homemade sweet potato pies and ice cream to crews of local workers, gathering enough to purchase additional dump land.

[25] In the early days of her school, the students made ink for pens from elderberry juice and pencils from burned wood; they asked local businesses for furniture.

When Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Institute visited in 1912, he advised her of the importance of gaining support from White benefactors for funding,[28] suggesting a few ways of doing so.

[30] Through the Great Depression, the school, renamed Bethune-Cookman College in 1931,[31] continued to operate and met the educational standards of the State of Florida.

Throughout the 1930s, Bethune and civil rights advocate Blake R. Van Leer worked with fellow Florida institutions to lobby for federal funding.

[43] After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, which enacted women's suffrage, Bethune continued her efforts to help Black people gain access to the polls.

While the organization struggled to raise funds for regular operations, Bethune envisioned acquiring a headquarters and hiring a professional executive secretary; she implemented this when NACW bought a property at 1318 Vermont Avenue in Washington, D.C.[44] Gaining a national reputation, in 1928, Bethune was invited to attend the Child Welfare Conference called by Republican President Calvin Coolidge.

[3] Bethune said of the council: It is our pledge to make a lasting contribution to all that is finest and best in America, to cherish and enrich her heritage of freedom and progress by working for the integration of all her people regardless of race, creed, or national origin, into her spiritual, social, cultural, civic, and economic life, and thus aid her to achieve the glorious destiny of a true and unfettered democracy.

[20] In the 1990s, the headquarters for the National Council for Negro Women moved to Pennsylvania Avenue, centrally located between the White House and the U.S. Capitol.

[49] Bethune lobbied the organization so aggressively and effectively for minority involvement that she earned a full-time staff position in 1936 as an assistant.

Bethune's administrative assistants served as liaisons between the National Division of Negro Affairs and the NYA agencies on the state and local levels.

At the Southern Conference on Human Welfare in 1938, held in Birmingham, Alabama, Eleanor Roosevelt requested a seat next to Bethune despite state segregation laws.

[57]Starting in 1920,[58] she opened her school to visitors and tourists in Daytona Beach on Sundays, showing off her students' accomplishments, hosting national speakers on Black issues, and taking donations.

The UNCF is a program which gives many different scholarships, mentorships, and job opportunities to African-American and other minority students attending any of the 37 historically Black colleges and universities.

Moreover, the Pittsburgh Courier wrote, "In any race or nation she would have been an outstanding personality and made a noteworthy contribution because her chief attribute was her indomitable soul."

The Washington Post said: "So great were her dynamism and force that it was almost impossible to resist her ... Not only her own people, but all America has been enriched and ennobled by her courageous, ebullient spirit."

Robert Weaver, who also served in Roosevelt's Black Cabinet, said of her, "She had the most marvelous gift of effecting feminine helplessness in order to attain her aims with masculine ruthlessness.

[77] On July 10, 1974, the anniversary of her 99th birthday, the Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial, by artist Robert Berks, was erected in her honor in Lincoln Park (Washington, D.C.).

[78][79] The inscription on the pedestal reads "let her works praise her" (a reference to Proverbs 31:31), while the side is engraved with passage headings from her "Last Will and Testament": I leave you to love.

Speakers during the day of events included Dorothy Height, President of the National Council of Negro Women; Governor James B. Edwards, Senate president pro tempore Marion Gressette; House Speaker Rex Carter, Commissioner of the South Carolina Human Affairs Commission Jim Clyburn and National Council of Negro Women event Co-Chair Alma W.

[86] Schools have been named in her honor in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Diego, Dallas, Phoenix, Palm Beach, Florida, Moreno Valley, California, Minneapolis, Ft. Lauderdale, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Folkston and College Park, Georgia, New Orleans, Rochester, New York, Cleveland, South Boston, Virginia, Jacksonville, Florida, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

[88] The statue of Mary McLeod Bethune was unveiled on July 13, 2022, in the United States Capitol, making her the first Black American represented in the National Statuary Hall Collection.

[89][90] A bronze copy of the marble statue was completed by the same artist, Nilda Comas, and erected in Daytona Beach's riverfront park beside the News-Journal Center August 18, 2022.

[91] The Mary McLeod Bethune Scholarship Program, for Floridian students wishing to attend historically Black colleges and universities within the state, is named in her honor.