writing society columns for the PITTSBURGH
COURIER.Her career included a long-standing edi-
torial position at the highly respected NEWYORK
CITYoffices of the AMSTERDAMNEWS.
Bethune, Mary McLeod (1875–1955)
A woman whose life embodied the fortitude, opti-
mism, determination, and potential of African
Americans in post-slavery America. The 15th
child of 17 born to Sam and Patsy McLeod, former
slaves who gained their freedom during the Civil
War, Mary McLeod established a national reputa-
tion for academic excellence, entrepreneurial inge-
nuity, and political savvy. She was the founder of a
school that by 1916 was known as the Daytona
Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls
and that eventually became part of BETHUNE-
COOKMANCOLLEGE. Her grandson eventually be-
came a librarian at the college.
Despite her distance from the bustling Harlem
scene, Bethune supported and established close ties
to a number of leading writers and figures of the pe-
riod. When LANGSTONHUGHESclosed his Febru-
ary 1932 poetry reading at the school with a
rendition of “The Negro Mother,” Bethune report-
edly exclaimed “My son! my son!” as she thanked
him. In his second memoir, I Wonder As I Wander,
Hughes described her as a woman “joyfully clothed
in African dignity.”
Bethune, who was widowed in 1918, was a
leader in national and African-American political
circles. She was a vice president in the NATIONAL
ASSOCIATION FOR THEADVANCEMENT OFCOL-
OREDPEOPLE, president of the NATIONALASSOCI-
ATION OFCOLOREDWOMEN, and president of the
national Council for Negro Women. Presidents
Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt both
called on her expertise and appointed her to serve
on committees relating to children’s health and
welfare.
Bibliography
Bethune, Mary McLeod. Building a Better World: Essays
and Selected Documents.Audrey Thomas McCluskey
and Elaine M. Smith, eds. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1999.
Holt, Rackham. Mary McLeod Bethune.Garden City,
N.J.: Doubleday, 1964.
Mary McLeod Bethune Papers, Bethune Foundation,
Bethune-Cookman College Archives, and the
Amistad Research Center.
Peare, Catherine. Mary McLeod Bethune. New York:
Vanguard Press, 1951.Bethune-Cookman College
This pioneering coeducational college resulted
from the merger of the Daytona Normal and In-
dustrial Institute for Negro Girls, founded in 1904,
with the all-male Cookman Institute, founded in
1872, in Jacksonville, Florida. In 1923 it was offi-
cially named Bethune-Cookman College, in honor
of MARYMCLEODBETHUNE, the legendary educa-
tor and the only woman to have founded a histori-
cally black college in the United States.
In its early years, the college functioned as a
high school and offered junior college–level
classes. By 1931, it had become a two-year college,
and in 1947, it was accredited as a four-year insti-
tution of higher learning. Bethune retired from the
post of president in 1942. The school continues to
thrive and today is part of the impressive consor-
tium of historically black colleges and universities.Bibb, Joseph Dandridge(1891–unknown)
The Georgia-born attorney who helped to found
the CHICAGO WHIP, an extremely successful
African-American newspaper that achieved a cir-
culation of nearly 70,000 within 10 years of its be-
ginnings. Educated at a number of schools,
including ATLANTAUNIVERSITYand HARVARD
UNIVERSITY, Bibb graduated in 1918 with a law de-
gree from YALEUNIVERSITY.“Bidin’ Place”May Miller(1937)
A short story by MAY MILLER SULLIVAN, the
woman who encouraged ZORANEALEHURSTON
to attend HOWARDUNIVERSITYand who com-
forted GEORGIA DOUGLASJOHNSON as she lay
dying. “Bidin’ Place,” which appeared in the April
1937 issue of Arts Quarterly,was a first-person ac-
count of a sobering encounter between an un-
named white traveler and the tragic families he
meets when car trouble leaves him stranded in
rural North Carolina.32 Bethune, Mary McLeod