A Passionate Mind In Relentless Pursuit by Noliwe Rooks

This is a time limited biography of a woman I had never heard of who had tremendous influence in her time. Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955) was her parents’ 15th child and the first one born free. She fought for civil rights during the grim period between the end of Reconstruction and the post–World War II Civil Rights Movement. She founded schools, with an emphasis on educating Black girls, and she raised money to pay poll taxes and offered instruction on how to pass literacy tests for Black Americans trying to vote in the Jim Crow South. She served in the leadership of numerous civil rights and mutual aid organizations, from the NAACP to the National Council of Negro Women, and she advocated for the Black community as an adviser to three presidents. How did she do it? This is yet another example of what Eleanor Roosevelt did to lift up both African Americans as well as women in her time. In the early winter of 1938, Eleanor Roosevelt took a stand when she followed her friend, Mary McLeod Bethune into the Southern Conference for Human Welfare and sat beside Bethune, defying the racist Public Safety Commissioner of Birmingham, Alabama. That’s an account that’s easy to find anywhere, and it’s thrilling, but the story misses something: at one point, the conference’s organizer asked for “Mary” to come up to the platform. Bethune drew herself up and told the organizer “My name is Mrs. Bethune.” She heard the disrespect and she corrected it. The author identifies this as a personal work for her--she states that her grandparents knew Bethune and, in doing research for this book, her understanding of Bethune was totally changed. Bethune was more than an activist — she was also a dream maker and “the first lady of Black America.” This is a short read, but fascinating and again, if you didn't already love Eleanor Roosevelt, this will add on to the pile of miracles she performed.