The dilemma for Bethune was how to get southern and northern white people, especially the monied elite, to support black education.

McCluskey

Mary McLeod Bethune: Building a Better World. The book examines the life of a most remarkable black woman.

Bethune (1875-1955) lived from the post-Reconstruction era to the beginning of the civil rights era. She made significant and lasting contributions as an advocate for her race and gender in a number of areas, including education, government and service.

"I resist the urge to define Mary Bethune," said McCluskey. "She defies categorization. Five different aspects of her persona are present in this book, and she was one and all of them during different, and sometimes overlapping, periods in her life."

She opened her first school in rural Florida in 1902, then moved to Daytona in 1904. There, she was to become one of the world’s few female college founders, establishing what is today Bethune-Cookman College and serving as its president. She assumed leadership responsibilities of the National Association of Colored Women from 1924-28 and in 1935, founded the influential National Council of Negro Women. She was appointed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the advisory board of the National Youth Administration, a position in which her leadership produced thousands of dollars in grants for black colleges, scholarship aid for black students and a format for placing black issues on the national agenda. In 1937, Bethune organized a widely publicized National Conference on the Problems of the Negro, an event that featured prominent government leaders as speakers, including the first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1945, she served as associate consultant to the U.S. delegation–the only black woman in an official role–at the San Francisco conference to draft the United Nations charter.

Bethune wrote columns for the two most influential black newspapers, the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender, and was a frequent speaker. Living a highly visible life in Washington, D.C., she was often the subject of newspaper articles–something of a media darling, according to McCluskey.

"She was probably one of only a few blacks that the most influential whites would know by name, and she enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with many of them that served their mutual interests," said McCluskey. "She was a very principled and religious woman with the ability to reach across so many barriers of difference in pursuit of her goals. She appealed to people’s better instincts. Her tact was not to condemn people, but to offer them hope."

Bethune was not without her critics, though. Politically savvy, she played to her particular forum and audience, which some interpreted as bowing and scraping. Others saw her as domineering and arrogant. "Bethune adjusted her tactics, but not her essential agenda for black empowerment," explained McCluskey. "She would take what the existing system offered, and then ask for more.

"For example, regarding segregation, she knew that abolishing it was a long-range goal, so for her, as she started her school in 1904, the question was: ‘How can I get these southern and northern white people, especially the monied elite, to support black education?’

It would not have been useful for her to advocate integration when the whole notion of spending money for black education was in question."