EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN THE SECOND HALF OF 1800; MARY JANE MCLEOD BETHUNE P/64

 

In this story I will focus on a woman named Mary McLeod Bethune. She lived from 1875 - 1955. Her parents were Sam McLeod and Patsy McIntosh. They were former slaves. Mary noticed racial inequality as a child, observing that the Black community had access to less wealth and opportunity. She remembered particularly visiting the home of the Wilson family that had enslaved her mother - where she explored a play house while her mother worked. Mary picked up a book and one of the Wilson girls admonished her with "Put down that book, you can't read." Mary later cited the incident as contributing to her desire for literacy and education.

In 1886, Mary began attending Mayesville's one-room Black schoolhouse, Trinity Mission School, which was run by the Presbyterian Board of Missions of Freedmen. The school was five miles from her home, and she walked there and back. 

She attended Scotia Seminary (now Barber- Scotia College) from 1888 - 1894. And she attended Dwight L.Moody's Inistitute for Home and Foreign Missions in Chicago (now the Moody Bible Inistitute) from 1894 - 1895, hoping to become a missionary to Africa. Told by the Presbyterian mission board where she applied to become a missionary, that Black missionaries were not needed, she planned to teach as education was a prime goal among African Americans.