America's Town Meeting of the Air, New York City - November 23, 1939
In the New Deal era, educator and activist Mary McLeod Bethune was called, “The First Lady of the Struggle", for her influence on the Roosevelt administration on civil rights issues. In 1904, Bethune founded a small school for black girls, in Florida, and she quickly built it into a thriving college-prep and vocational training program. In 1923, she merged the school with Cookman College to create the first fully accredited black institution of higher learning in the state. Bethune was born to former slaves in 1875. One of seventeen children, she grew up picking cotton in Sumter County, South Carolina. ...
