DARE TO DREAM BIG: From the Cotton Fields to the Whitehouse

Imagine This: You’re a young black woman who dreams of being a missionary to Africa, but your school refuses to send a black missionary to Africa. So what do you do? Do you give up your dream? Or do you find a new dream?

 You’re born in Mayesville, South Carolina, the fifteenth of seventeen children. Your entire family works long hours growing cotton on your five-acre farm.

 Your parents want at least one of their children to receive an education, so in 1885 when you’re ten years old, your parents send you to Trinity Presbyterian Mission School, a school for black children.

 You get up early every morning, do your chores, and then walk the five miles to school. You study hard at school, then you walk back home where you do more chores, and every night you teach your brothers and sisters what you learned in school that day.

 You do well in school and when you’re twelve, your teachers select you to receive a scholarship to attend the Scotia Seminary in Concord, North Carolina, where you excel in English and you learn to speak and write with confidence.

 After you complete your education at the seminary in 1894, you attend the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois. The Moody Institute sends missionaries to countries around the world, and you want to become a missionary in Africa. But there are no openings for black missionaries in Africa, and you later say that this was “the greatest disappointment of your life.”

 You begin teaching at the Haines Institute in Augusta, Georgia, where you discover your love of teaching and you realize that you don’t need to go to Africa to help your people. Africans in America need teachers just as much as Africans in Africa, and you decide that you will dedicate your life to helping black children receive an education.

 Back then, schools for black students offer only classes to help them become better servants or laborers and do not teach students how to be leaders. And there are few educational opportunities for black girls, but you intend to change that!

 In 1899 you move to Florida where you work hard to raise money to open your own school. You realize your dream in 1904 when you open the Daytona Educational and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls in Daytona Beach, Florida.

 Your first class has only five girls and your supplies are meager. You use sticks of charcoal as pencils, you boil berries to make ink, and you make desks and chairs out of old wooden boxes. Tuition is 50 cents a week.

 Your school grows quickly and two years later there are 250 students and four teachers. You continue to work hard to find wealthy patrons such as John D. Rockefeller to support your school, and in 1923, your school merges with the Cookman Institute for Men in Jacksonville to become Bethune-Cookman College.

 You serve as president of the school from 1904 until 1942 while you continue to work to improve educational and economic opportunities for African Americans.

 In 1935 you found the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) which grows in time to include 800,000 women, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt asks you to work with him as an advisor on Negro Affairs. You serve as his advisor from 1936 to 1943.

 When you die in 1955 at age 79 from a heart attack, you are recognized as an educator, a civil rights leader, a political activist, a presidential advisor, and one of the most influential black women of the twentieth century.

 “I would not exchange my color for all the wealth in the world. For had I been born white I might not have been able to do all that I have done or yet hope to do.”

                                    Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955)

For More about Mary McLeod Bethune:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkM_YcJXF7g

 Giving Back:  Mary McLeod Bethune dedicated her entire life to improving educational and economic opportunities for African Americans.

 Did You Know  that she had 72 black rose bushes planted at Bethune-Cookman College so that even her garden would illustrate  “equality” and the black rose became her trademark?

 Something to Think about:  Do you think that it’s possible to give up one dream and replace it with another dream? Why or why not?

 Willoughby and I hope you enjoyed this week’s true story and will be back next week for another story to inspire you to DARE TO DREAM BIG!