StoryMakers, do you love to learn? What’s your favorite subject? Our StoryMaker today loved learning so much, she walked five miles to school each way. Mary McLeod Bethune was born in 1875, the fifteenth of seventeen children, and was the first person in her family not born into slavery. When she was young, Mary prayed for the chance to learn to read and write. The next year, a school was founded. Mary says this as part of her story, as a student and as a teacher. She was the only one of her siblings to go to school so after she got home, she taught her family everything she’d learned that day.
When Mary was a teenager, she felt called to be a missionary but was told she could not be one because of the color of her skin. Even though she was disappointed and mad about how unfair the decision was, Mary took all of her passion for helping others and started a school, the Daytona Literary and Industrial Training Institute for girls. She started in one small classroom with five girls and her son as her students.
Mary did not have much money to start a school and she used whatever she could find- crates for desks, elderberry juice for ink for the pens, and burned wood for pencils.
She said, “I considered cash money as the smallest part of my resources. I have faith in a loving God, faith in myself, and a desire to serve.”
Within two years, Mary’s school grew from five pupils to 250. She eventually served as the president of the school for over twenty years. When one of her students fell ill, Mary noticed the lack of medical help for African-American women. So Mary started a hospital. In 1936, she was appointed to the National Youth Administration by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. She advised President Roosevelt on issues like schools, helping those who are disabled, and even helped start a program to train African American pilots.
Mary McLeod Bethune never gave up on the idea that God had a plan for her and her story ended up creating millions of opportunities for those who had none. She led the way for women and African-American neighbors to learn to read, write, teach and nurse. Her story continues in the work of her school, Bethune-Cookman to this day.
We all have a story and God is with us, just as he was with Mary McLeod Bethune from her five-mile walk to school to the White House, advising the top leaders in the land.
To get ready for a new school year and to remember how Mary made so much out of what little resources she had, we have a cool craft video for you: making books with things you find in nature!
Let’s get crafty!
Create your very own Zine and share your story.
TOOLS
STICKS(2),RUBBER BANDS (2) CARDSTOCK, PAPER, PAPER PUNCH, MARKERS, TAPE
