CARRIE BEST CANADIAN CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST

Murphy Browne © October 11-2017

CARRIE BEST CANADIAN CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST

"Dear Mr. Mason, I sincerely trust that this is the last time that I shall be forced to undergo the humiliating and undemocratic treatment that I have been forced to undergo from your employees at the Roseland Theatre. It should not be necessary for me to remind them that I am a citizen and taxpayer in the town and as such have the right under British law to sit in any public place I wish to while I enter and exit in a clean, orderly manner. I have spent the entire afternoon conducting a personal Gallup poll to see if this rule is the carry-over from the faraway days of slavery or if this is the rule of the Board of Directors and shareholders of the Roseland Theatre Company. Scores of respected citizens were amazed to believe that such Jim Crow tactics are practiced on decent law-abiding citizens and when the time comes have said they will not hesitate to speak against it. Today I speak for one family, the Bests, my husband, my son and myself. I will ask, no, I will demand to be given the same rights as the Chinese and other nationalities of the Dominion of Canada and today I speak for my family only. As I am too tired to come to the theatre tonight, I respectfully request you, Sir, to instruct your employees to sell me the ticket I wish when next I come to the theatre or I shall make public every statement made to me by you and your help: of negroes being dirty, smelly, etc., and of you taking it upon yourself to evict high-school girls of irreproachable character from your office. Please get this straight, Mr. Mason. If respectable coloured people are cowardly enough to put up with such treatment they are welcome. I speak today for no family but my own and if you wish a public controversy both pro and con as to whether you have the power of a dictator to decide in a British town who is a citizen and who isn’t, you can have it. If my words are clear and strong I wish you could have heard some of the citizens who do not believe such a thing is possible in times like these. The statement of your employee to me that no coloured person can sit downstairs in the Capitol Theatre in Halifax is a lie of the first order as I have and always do sit there and I am sure the public will be interested to hear all this. I am coming to the theatre Monday.” Mrs. Best"  Letter from Carrie Best to Norman W. Mason, owner of the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. Carrie Best was born on March 4, 1903 in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia to James and Georgina Ashe Prevoe. In 1925 she married Albert T. Best and they had one son James Calbert Best. In December 1941 several African Canadian female secondary school students were forcibly removed from the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia when they refused to move from the "whites only" section of the cinema. African Canadian Civil Rights activist Carrie Best decided to investigate and found that segregation was practiced at the cinema. After writing to the owner and being ignore on Monday, December 29th, 1941 she and her teenage son James Calbert Best went to see a movie at the Roseland Theatre. They refused to sit in the balcony which was reserved for African Canadians and sat in the "whites only" section. Erskine Cumming, the assistant manager of the Roseland Theatre ordered the mother and son to leave and when they refused he called the police who dragged them out of their seats. Carrie Best filed a civil suit against the management of the Roseland Theatre and in the case Best v. Mason and Roseland Theatre, 1942, was tried in May 1942 before Judge Robert Henry Graham of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court. Carrie Best who was described as “a Negress”, “a British subject” and “a married woman” lost the case when Judge Graham decided that although theatres advertise their services generally to the public, yet the management had the right to exclude anyone from the theatre, and that theatres therefore were no different from private dwellings. Graham in charging the jury said: “The ordinary citizen [has] the right to exclude anyone from their homes unless a contract [has] been entered into.” (Quote from The Advocate Newspaper, May 21, 1942.) Graham also urged the jury to disregard any other questions raised by the litigation describing them as “irrelevant.” Judge Graham dismissed Carrie Best’s civil suit against the Roseland Theatre ordered her to pay $156.07 to the owner of the Roseland Theatre. Carrie Best was galvanized into becoming a journalist and publishing her newspaper "The Clarion" after she lost to the Roseland Theatre in court. "The Clarion" later renamed "The Negro Citizen" became the first newspaper owned by an African Canadian in Nova Scotia.  In 1946 when African Canadian businesswoman Viola Davis Desmond was dragged out of the Roseland Theatre for sitting in the "whites only" section of the cinema, it was Carrie Best and her newspaper "The Clarion" that publicized the case. Carrie Best supported Desmond throughout her struggle against the white supremacist segregationist culture of Nova  Scotia. Carrie Best also began hosting  a radio show "The Quiet Corner." In 1968, Carrie Best was hired as a Human Rights columnist for the "Pitcou Advocate" and wrote about the dreadful conditions on Native Reserves, discrimination against African Canadian property owners and racism in Canadian legal and political institutions. At the time (1946) that Desmond, Best and other African Canadians in Nova Scotia were fighting to end segregation, African Canadians had recently returned to Canada from fighting in Europe in what was described as the second World War which was supposedly fought to bring freedom to the world. Canada at that time was a dominion of the British Empire whose Prime Minister Winston Churchill made his famous “Finest Hour” speech on June 18, 1940 which included these words: "Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire." Obviously Churchill’s “Christian civilization” did not include White Canadians being “civil” to African Canadians or considering their “Civil Rights” of any importance. After all their “war efforts” African Canadians in 1946 did not have the “freedom” to sit where they wanted in a cinema. The men who came back from Europe after fighting for “freedom” could only expect to get “good” jobs as sleeping car porters. African Canadian author Stanley Grizzle wrote about his experiences as a soldier in the Canadian armed forces and as a porter on the Canadian railroad in his 1998 published book “My name's not George: The story of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters : personal reminiscences of Stanley G. Grizzle.” On May 18, 1945 the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in Canada signed an agreement that represented the first unionized agreement for African Canadian workers with an employer. The men were porters working with the Canadian Pacific and the Northern Alberta Railway. The May 18, 1945 unionization meant that for the first time African Canadian Sleeping Car Porters could bargain for better wages and working conditions and lobby federal and provincial governments to create legislation prohibiting discrimination in employment and housing. It was not until 1964 that African Canadian porters were finally employed in other positions at the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National Railways (CPR and CNR.) In 1975, the work that Carrie Best had done for decades was recognized when she was made a Member of the Order of Canada and in 1979, she was made an Officer of the Order. Carrie Best was awarded a number of honorary doctorates and a Queen Elizabeth Medal. Carrie Best transitioned on July 24, 2001 and in 2002, she was posthumously awarded the Order of Nova Scotia. October is Women's History Month in Canada and we must remember the African Canadian women like Carrie Best whose bravery led to many changes in this country. Murphy Browne © October 11-2017

SYLVIA STARK CANADIAN PIONEER WOMAN

Murphy Browne © October 2013


OCTOBER IS WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH IN CANADA


SYLVIA STARK CANADIAN PIONEER WOMAN


In 2013 the theme for Women’s History Month 2013 was “Canadian Women Pioneers: Inspiring Change Through Ongoing Leadership.” Sylvia Estes Stark was a “Canadian Women Pioneer.”
During this month as we recognize Women’s History Month in Canada the official theme for the month (from Status of Women Canada) is “Canadian Women Pioneers: Inspiring change through ongoing leadership.” Sylvia Estes Stark is one of the pioneering women whose name should be included on the list of pioneering women in Canada. Estes Stark and her family were pioneers who helped to develop Vancouver Island in British Columbia.


Sylvia Estes was born in 1839 into an enslaved African family in Clay County, Missouri. Sylvia, her older brother Jackson, her younger sister Agnes and her mother Hannah were owned by Charles Leopold. Sylvia’s father Howard Estes was owned by Tom Estes and worked on his ranch as a cattle-herder. Gold was discovered in California in 1848 which started a “Gold Rush” of some 300,000 people looking to strike it rich. In 1849 Tom Estes decided to cash in on the fortunes being made in California by sending his two sons and Howard Estes to California to sell cattle because beef was in great demand. Howard Estes seized this opportunity to strike a bargain with his owner where he would work as a prospector mining for gold while in California and buy his freedom for $1,000 dollars. Tom Estes agreed to give Howard Estes his freedom papers whenever he received the $1,000 dollars.


While in California Howard Estes worked, saved and sent the $1,000 dollars back with Tom Estes’ sons. Tom Estes collected the money but reneged on the bargain he had struck with Howard Estes and refused to give him his freedom. Howard Estes who at that time was mining gold in California refused to return to slavery and instead continued to work and sent money to the “owner” of his wife and children to buy their freedom. Tom Estes took Charles Leopold to court claiming that any money Leopold received from Howard Estes as payment for his family’s freedom rightfully belonged to him (Tom Estes) since he “owned” Howard Estes. Leopold kept the money and unlike Tom Estes gave Hannah Estes and her children their freedom. The upshot of the court case was that Tom Estes was forced to grant Howard Estes his free papers. Unfortunately by the time Howard Estes returned to Missouri to claim his family his youngest daughter Agnes had transitioned from the effects of scarlet fever.


Returning to Missouri a free man in 1851 and after securing his family’s freedom the Howard Estes family left for California, a free state. In California the remaining Estes daughter Sylvia Estes married Louis Stark in 1855 and the couple had two children. The Estes family moved to California to ensure they remained free but because of vicious racial persecution they eventually moved to British Columbia in Canada. By 1858 African Americans realizing that although California was a free state they were not really free seized the opportunity to leave the shores of the USA and settle on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. In 1858 the African American community of California received a letter of invitation to immigrate from the Governor of Vancouver Island, Sir James Douglas. Maybe Douglas felt some kinship with the beleaguered African American community because he was the son (born in British Guiana) of an African woman and a Scottish man. Together with hundreds of other African Americans the Estes and Stark family immigrated to Vancouver Island.


Sylvia and her husband Louis Stark with their family settled on Salt Spring Island in 1860. They were homesteaders who worked at making a home of the log cabin in which they lived and clearing the wilderness around their home for farming. As a pioneer woman, Sylvia Stark had to contend with wild animals (bears and cougars) stealing her livestock and the backbreaking work necessary to survive as a farmer during the early settlement of British Columbia. She also served her community as a midwife. Some of her recollections were documented by her daughter including: “Sylvia Stark’s first sight of her new home on Salt Spring Island was an unfinished log cabin surrounded by trees and thick underbrush.” As a young mother of four small children (2 more born in Canada) she had to take care of their livestock when her husband became ill and was bedridden for several weeks following complications from a small pox vaccination. “There were 14 cows to milk, pigs and chickens to feed, aside from her other duties and tending to the children.” In spite of such setbacks and losing livestock to marauding wild animals: “Mrs. Stark seemed to be tireless in her efforts to make their home life enjoyable. She made hominy from the wheat and corn of their own raising. Sometimes boiled wheat had to be a substitute for bread.”


Pioneer women have been idealised as the people who helped to “make” this country and several White women have written about their experiences “roughing it in the bush” as settlers in early Canada. Sylvia Estes Stark was a Canadian pioneer woman although she did not have the luxury of time to document her thoughts and experiences; she was too busy surviving and helping her community to survive. Sylvia Stark transitioned in 1944 at age 105 and her life is recognised as an important part of British Columbia history. She should be remembered along with all the other “Canadian Women Pioneers: Inspiring change through ongoing leadership” during this Women’s History Month.


Murphy Browne © October 2013

MARY ANN SHADD CARY CANADIAN SHERO

Murphy Browne © October 9-2017

OCTOBER IS WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH IN CANADA

MARY ANN SHADD CARY CANADIAN SHERO

One hundred and ninety four years ago on October 9, 1823, Mary Ann Shadd was born in Wilmington, Delaware. She was the eldest of 13 children of Abraham Doras Shadd and Harriet Burton Parnell. The Cary family were free African Americans living in a slave holding America. When it became illegal to educate African American children in the state of Delaware, the Shadd family moved to Pennsylvania, where Mary attended a Quaker school. In 1840, after being away at school, Mary Ann returned to West Chester and established a school for African American children. She also later taught in Norristown, Pennsylvania, and New York City.


When the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 in the United States threatened to return free northern African Americans and those who had escaped slavery back into bondage, Shadd and her brother Isaac moved to Canada and settled in Windsor, Ontario. In Windsor, she established a school and published an anti-slavery newspaper called The Provincial Freeman, 1853 which made her the first female editor in North America. She encouraged African-Americans to leave the United States and immigrate to Canada.


In 1856 she married African Canadian businessman Thomas Cary who passed away in 1860. Thomas Cary and his brothers (George, Isaac and John) like Mary Ann Shadd were free born African Americans who chose to move to Canada since slavery had been abolished in Canada on August 1, 1834. The couple had a son and a daughter.

 When the Civil War broke out, Mary Ann Shadd Cary returned to the United States to help in the war effort. In 1863, she worked as a recruiting officer for the Union Army encouraging African Americans to join the fight against the Confederacy and against slavery. After the war, Shadd Cary attended one of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) Howard University from where she earned a law degree in 1883 when she was 60 years old!
Mary Ann Shadd Cary transitioned on June 5, 1893 in Washington, D.C.


Murphy Browne © October 9-2017

FANNIE LOU HAMER OCTOBER 6-1917

FANNIE LOU HAMER OCTOBER 6-1917


Fannie Lou Hamer who is one of my sheores would have been 100 years old today on October 6, 2017. She was an African-American civil rights leader and political activist who worked to improve the lives of African-Americans despite experiencing extreme racial injustice, including state and police violence. In 1961 Hamer, like thousands of African-American women living in Mississippi, was sterilized without her knowledge by a White doctor as part of the state of Mississippi's plan to reduce the population of African-Americans.


In 1962 Hamer began working to help African-Americans register to vote. She was harassed, fired from her job and received numerous death threats. In 1963, Hamer and other activists were arrested and viciously beaten (she suffered permanent kidney damage, permanent damage to her left eye and a permanent limp) but that did not prevent her from continuing her quest to ensure her community gained their civil rights.


She helped to organize the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's (SNCC) "Freedom Summer" in Mississippi in 1964 and became Vice-Chair of the "Freedom Democrats" which was organized to challenge the all-White, anti-civil rights delegation to the Democratic National Convention (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-RoVzAqhYk). In 1969, Hamer co-founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative, which helped struggling farmers acquire land. She was actively involved in grassroots Head Start programs and in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign. She helped convene the National Women's Political Caucus in 1970 and when the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) created the Fannie Lou Hamer Day Care Center, she became the chair of its Board of Directors.


Hamer's life is documented in several biographies, including This Little Light of Mine: the Life of Fannie Lou Hamer, written by Kay Mills and published in 1993.

CUBANA AIRLINE FLIGHT 455 ON OCTOBER 6 - 1976

 CUBANA AIRLINE FLIGHT 455 ON OCTOBER 6 - 1976

Murphy Browne  © October 6-2014

On October 6, 1976 thirty eight years ago 11 Guyanese lost their lives in an act of terror committed by a United States trained agent Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles. On October 6, 1976 Guyana lost several potential doctors, all of them 18 year olds on their way to Cuba on scholarship to pursue medical studies. The bombing of Cubana flight 455 on October 6, 1976 remains the worst act of terrorism aboard a commercial airline in the Americas in the 20th century. It was historically the worst act of terrorism aboard a commercial airline in the Americas until the plane that brought down the twin towers on September 11, 2001.
The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) trained the terrorist Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles who planted two toothpaste bombs on Cubana flight 455 which carried 78 people (73 passengers and 5 crew members) all of whom perished in the blast. Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles who lives in Miami, Florida is the notorious terrorist who is responsible for the bombing of the Cubana Airlines Flight 455 in which 78 people including 11 Guyanese were killed on October 6, 1976.

With the USA declared "war on terror" which George W. Bush declared with much fanfare on September 20, 2001 one has to wonder why the American government is harbouring a known terrorist who is feted in the Miami Cuban community. In a speech on September 20, 2001, Bush said: “And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” 


Yet on October 6, 2014 thirty eight years since the CIA terrorist Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles destroyed the lives, the promising futures of 78 people including 11 Guyanese (several 18 year old potential doctors, a 9 year old and a young mother who left her 2 month old baby with the grandmother) there has been no offer of compensation to the families who lost their loved ones in what has been recognized as the most deadly terrorist airline attack in the western hemisphere in the 20th century.

On October 6, 1976 with the bombing of Cubana flight 455 irreparable damage was done to the people of Guyana by a terrorist trained by and harboured by the American government. Should Guyanese demand compensation from the American government for this act of terrorism? Guyana cannot kidnap the CIA trained terrorist Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles from American soil and put him on trial for the brutal assassination of 11 Guyanese. Guyana cannot invade America for harbouring terrorists.


Murphy Browne  © October 6-2014

OCTOBER IS AFRICAN HERITAGE MONTH IN BRITAIN

Murphy Browne © 2010
OCTOBER IS AFRICAN HERITAGE MONTH IN BRITAIN


While we celebrate African Heritage Month in February, our counterparts in Britain celebrate African/Black History Month in October. Many Africans in Britain can only trace their ancestry as far as the Caribbean where their ancestors were enslaved by Britain’s white population and stripped of their names, languages and culture. Africans whose land was carved up by European tribes, including the tribes of Britain, can trace their ancestry back to specific areas of the African continent but they also inherited a legacy of European domination which destroyed or at least contaminated their culture (as described in several books including Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.) Achebe, an Igbo from Nigeria was born in 1939 several years after the British had colonized much of the African continent including Nigeria. He has written extensively about the effect of colonization on the Africans.


Surprisingly during the celebration of Britain’s significant population of African and African Caribbean people, the history of African Americans play a significant role. Although Africans have been a part of the island’s history even before the English, this is not a major part of the recognition of African history in Britain. In 1984 Peter Fryer a white British author published Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain in which he wrote: “There were Africans in Britain before the English came here. They were soldiers in the Roman imperial army that occupied the southern part of our island for three and a half centuries. Though the earliest attested date for this unit’s presence here is 253-8, an African soldier is reputed to have reached Britain by the year 210.”
One writer, who describes the history of October as African/Black History Month in Britain, bemoans the fact that the focus is on a few figures of historical significance. Afua Hirsch writes in a column published on October 1, 2010 in Britain’s Guardian newspaper:
“The original motive behind Black History Month was to redress the dishonest way history was taught in British schools: airbrushing out black people except for their role as slaves or colonial subjects. There is equally a dishonesty in elevating people such as Muhammad Ali and Mary Seacole into simplistic figures of black pride.”

Mary Seacole (1805–1881) born in Jamaica was an army nurse during the Crimean War. Seacole’s services as a nurse were refused by Britain’s War office but she persevered, travelled to the war zone and eventually became a heroine of the Crimean War through her unselfish work caring for wounded British soldiers. Seacole’s work and name is not as popular outside of Britain and Jamaica as the names of African American heroes and sheroes. While I agree that the celebration of a few people’s lives should not be the focus of recognizing our history, it is important that we call their names and remember them as our people who have achieved in spite of adversity and can serve as role models.


In 1999 Fryer, the author of Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (which in some quarters is considered the definitive written history of Africans in Britain) published The Politics of Windrush. Fryer had been a young reporter when the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury in Essex on June 22, 1948. Although there had been an African presence in Britain for centuries, the arrival of the Empire Windrush carrying 492 passengers from Jamaica and Trinidad changed that history. The image of the large number of African Caribbean passengers disembarking has become an important landmark in the history of Britain, symbolising the beginning of modern multicultural relations which has significantly changed British society over the past 60 years. In 1998, an area in Brixton was renamed Windrush Square to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the arrival of the Caribbean migrants. In commemorating the 50 th anniversary of the arrival of the Windrush and celebrating African/Black History Month, Fryer was invited to speak at the Mandela Centre at Leeds on October 10, 1998 and an edited version of his speech is the text of the book The Politics of Windrush.
Many of the passengers on the Windrush were Caribbean men who were former members of the British armed forces from the Second World War. They were promised that jobs would be waiting for them and some looked forward to rejoining the Royal Air Force. When they first arrived, 202 of the passengers found employment right away. Many of them were employed by the National Health Service, some found work in factories and mills, but most were employed by London Transport. The SS Orbita, the SS Reina del Pacifico and the SS Georgic followed the Windrush in transporting large numbers of Caribbean immigrants to Britain. On Tuesday, August 2nd, 1955, the SS Auriga left Kingston, Jamaica with the previously unheard of number of 1,100 passengers. In less than a week, the SS Castle Verde followed with another full shipload. Immigrants from Britain’s other Caribbean colonies joined the exodus in what Jamaican poet Louise Bennett Coverly (Miss Lou) described in her popular poem as colonization in reverse. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEQVJEiWS_E


In 1955, there were 27,550 migrants from the Caribbean arriving in Britain. By 1960, the numbers of Caribbean people migrating to Britain had risen to 49,650 and the rate had increased to 66,300 in 1961. The Commonwealth Immigrants Act was passed in 1962, limiting immigrant entry and the number decreased to 31,800. In 1963 there were only 3,241 Caribbean immigrants allowed into Britain and the numbers peaked at 14,848 in 1965 then began falling rapidly to less than 10,000 each year.


The presence of the immigrants from the Caribbean and the African continent may have increased the numbers and visibility but we know that there has been an African presence in Britain for more than 18,000 years. The Oxford Companion to Black British History by David Dabydeen, John Gilmore and Cecily Jones published in 2007 documents African Presence in Britain from as early as the 2nd century A.D.


Murphy Browne © 2010

MARY MCLEOD BETHUNE

One hundred and thirteen years ago on October 4, 1904 Mary McLeod Bethune, an African American woman opened a school with five students in Dayton Beach, Florida. The five students of the "Daytona Educational and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls" were Anna, Celeste, Lena, Lucille and Ruth Anna, Celeste, Lena, Lucille and Ruth. The school Mrs. Mary McLeod Bethune opened 113 years ago would eventually become the Bethune-Cookman College in 1941 and Bethune-Cookman University in 2007. It is one of the 105 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the USA.


Murphy Browne © 2014 


MARY MCLEOD BETHUNE


"I leave you finally a responsibility to our young people. The world around us really belongs to youth for youth will take over its future management. Our children must never lose their zeal for building a better world. They must not be discouraged from aspiring toward greatness, for they are to be the leaders of tomorrow. Nor must they forget that the masses of our people are still underprivileged, ill-housed, impoverished and victimized by discrimination. We have a powerful potential in our youth, and we must have the courage to change old ideas and practices so that we may direct their power toward good ends."

 Excerpt from “My Last Will and Testament” by Mary McLeod Bethune (July 10, 1875 – May 18, 1955)

 Mary McLeod Bethune’s “Last Will and Testament” was fittingly published in Ebony Magazine the preeminent African American magazine. The article published in the November 1973 edition of Ebony Magazine paid tribute to the life led by this extraordinary African American educator and civil rights activist. So great is her legacy that it is hardly possible to read about Mayesville, South Carolina without the name Mary McLeod Bethune appearing.

 Mary McLeod Bethune was born Mary Jane McLeod on July 10, 1875 in Mayesville, South Carolina. She was the 15th of 17 children born to Samuel and Patsy (McIntosh) McLeod. Her parents had been enslaved Africans and she was the first child in her family who was born after the emancipation (1865) of Africans in the USA. Some of her siblings had been sold by the McLeod family that “owned” them. After the abolition of slavery, Samuel and Patsy McLeod were able to retrieve their children from the various plantations where they had been sold. The African American McLeods eventually bought five acres of land where they built a home and raised their family of 17 children. Patsy McLeod continued working for the White McLeod family who had been their former owners doing the same work she had done as an enslaved woman (African women could only work as maids or other similar work they had done during their enslavement) while Samuel McLeod cultivated cotton on the 5 acres of land the family then owned. The 17 McLeod children also worked on the family’s land but Mary Jane McLeod wanted an education something that most African Americans could not afford. When she was 11 years old she was allowed to attend the one room school for Africans in Mayesville. She was an eager and brilliant student who impressed her teacher and she earned a scholarship to attend Scotia Seminary (now Barber-Scotia College) in Concord, North Carolina. After graduating from Scotia Seminary, McLeod was awarded a scholarship to attend the Bible Institute for Home and Foreign Missions (now Moody Bible Institute) in Chicago, Illinois. After graduating from the Bible Institute in 1895, she planned to go to Africa, the land of her ancestors, to minister to the spiritual and educational needs of her people on the continent. That plan came to naught when she learned that the Presbyterian Mission Board would not assign an African American to teach in Africa.

 She was disappointed but undaunted by the fact that her dream of becoming a missionary in Africa was not realized. Taking that in stride Mary Jane McLeod instead went back to Mayesville to begin her teaching career. She also taught at Augusta, Georgia and at Sumter, South Carolina. While teaching at Savannah, Georgia in 1898, she met and married Albertus Bethune and had a son, Albert, a year later. In 1904 she moved to Daytona, Florida where she established a school for African American girls. Mary McLeod Bethune founded the school for African American girls as an elementary school with five students on October 4, 1904. She had deposited five dollars as a down payment on a property for which the asking price was 250 dollars. Over several years the institute grew into a co-educational secondary school after a merging with Cookman Institute of Jacksonville, Florida. By 1931 it was a junior college and in 1941 had grown into Bethune Cookman College, with a four year baccalaureate program offering liberal arts and teacher education. By 1947, the institution was mortgage-free, had a faculty of 100 and a student enrollment of more than 1,000. On February 14, 2007, the Board of Trustees approved the name Bethune-Cookman University after the institution established its first graduate program. Student enrollment at Bethune-Cookman University for the academic year 2013-2014 was 3,486 (http://www.cookman.edu/) Bethune-Cookman University is one of the 105 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) in the USA.

McLeod Bethune believed that if African-American women were given the opportunity to vote, they could bring about change. In 1920, after passage of the 19th amendment, which allowed American women to vote, she went door to door raising money to pay the poll tax. In Southern states, African Americans had to pay a poll tax and pass a literacy test before they were allowed to vote. Beginning in the 1890s, southern states enacted literacy tests, poll taxes, elaborate registration systems and eventually Whites-only Democratic Party primaries to exclude African American voters. The poll tax, as it applied to primary elections leading to general elections for federal office, was abolished when the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified in 1964. McLeod Bethune taught night classes providing a means for African Americans to learn to read well enough to pass the literacy test. Her efforts eventually succeeded when 100 potential African American voters had qualified.

 The night before the election in November, 1920, while McLeod Bethune worked late in her office, she noticed that all street lights had gone out. Then there was the sound of car horns and horse hooves, soon she saw a procession of about 100 people masked in white sheets following a burning cross. The students at the school were all young African American girls, many of whom boarded on campus. The terrifying sight recalled images of the brutality and violence perpetuated against Africans since their enslavement. Thinking quickly McLeod Bethune ordered the lights turned off on campus and all outdoor floodlights turned on. The Klan was left standing in a pool of light watched by the terrified students, as the principal (McLeod Bethune) rallied her students to sing the spirituals that had comforted and imparted courage during the dreadful years of enslavement. The Klan soon dispersed and scattered into the night. The following day, McLeod Bethune led a procession of 100 African American men and women to the polls, who were all voting for the first time.

 McLeod Bethune was a national leader in the civil rights struggle. She was the highest ranking African American in the Roosevelt administration and played an important role in the integration of America’s armed forces and the founding of the United Nations. McLeod Bethune was recognized for her hard work during her lifetime, receiving the Spingarn Medal in 1935, the Frances Drexel Award for Distinguished Service in 1937, and the Thomas Jefferson Award for leadership in 1942. She received an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Rollins College in 1949, the first African-American to receive an honorary degree from a White southern college. She received the Medal of Honor and Merit from the Republic of Haiti in 1949 and the Star of Africa from the Republic of Liberia in 1952. On July 10, 1974, ninety-nine years after her birth, she became the first woman and the first African-American to be honoured with a statue in a public park (Lincoln Park) in Washington, D.C. Her portrait hangs in the South Carolina State House, the state capitol building in Columbia, South Carolina.

On May 18th, 1955, Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of Bethune Cookman University transitioned to be with the ancestors. Although McLeod Bethune wrote her “Last Will and Testament” (http://www.cookman.edu/abou…/history/lastwill_testament.html) before she transitioned in 1955 many Africans in the USA and Canada “are still underprivileged, ill-housed, impoverished and victimized by discrimination.” The words that McLeod Bethune (who was born 139 years ago) wrote in her “Last Will and Testament” are words that every educator (including parents) should take to heart. “Our children must never lose their zeal for building a better world. They must not be discouraged from aspiring toward greatness, for they are to be the leaders of tomorrow.”


Murphy Browne © 2014