Tues Mar 14th PM Daily Do's

*** YOUR DAILY DO'S - 3/14 - EVENING EDITION ***
Tonight's Do brings you another kickass woman of color.  Mary McLeod Bethune  Many thanks to Patty Weiser, who researched and wrote this post. - IN THIS CORNER, BORN IN 1875, YOU KNOW HER AS THE EDUCATOR, THE AGITATOR, THE PROGRESS ACCELERATOR... 
"My grandmother wrote books for children and would send us copies. In 1970, when I was ten, she sent us her book on Mary McLeod Bethune and it became my favorite book. It is the only book of my grandmother’s I wrote my name in. 
Mary McLeod Bethune was the 15th of 17 children and one of three born free. An incident with a white girl and a book when she was a child convinced Mary that reading was key in promoting equality between whites and blacks. However, opportunities for education were not readily available – until a mission school opened five miles from where Mary lived. Her parents agreed she could go and Mary would walk the five miles twice a day during all sorts of weather and when she arrived home she would teach her family what she had learned.
Mary would later continue her education receiving a scholarship to a boarding school and eventually went to Moody’s Institute for Home and Foreign Missions. Her goal was to serve in Africa but she was unable to obtain a sponsor and she began teaching in the south. Mary married, had a son, and later, after her husband had deserted them, she and her son eventually settled in Florida where she founded a school for black girls.
Mary only stopped educating when she served in Franklin Roosevelt’s administration and while on assignments for Harry Truman. Her school eventually merged with a boy’s school and became a college known today as Bethune-Cookman College. She was active in women’s groups serving in the National Association of Colored Women and founding the National Council of Negro Women to focus the organization on civil rights issues. She served as vice-president of the NAACP for 15 years. She promoted
awareness of lynchings, worked on voter rights, voter registration drives, helped integrate the Red Cross, and worked for equal pay for black federal workers. All while promoting education as a path forward... a phenomenal lady."
http://bit.ly/1Xv2brG

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