Lifting the veil on Mary McLeod Bethune’s contribution to American historiography: the first African American woman in the statuary hall collection in Washington D.C

Abstract

ABSTRACT This chapter seeks to complete the historiography on the hitherto unacknowledged dimension of Bethune’s intellectual endeavours and contribution to American history and culture. It will interrogate Bethune’s contribution to a more racialised and gendered narrative of American history which exemplifies the resistance and agency of her practice of history. Her exceptional trajectory will demonstrate how her marginal situation both in society and in the scholarly field of history proved inspirational in terms of civil rights activism and historical consciousness. Her pragmatic vision of history pushed her to use an arsenal of innovative methods and sources, such as the Black Women’s Archives Project, first hand testimonies of African American women’s lives, that would shape scholarly interpretation of Black women’s history. She broadened the scope of both American and Black history by focusing on a more inclusive narrative from her black feminist perspective. Bethune’s entrance into the Statuary Hall in 2022 – she will become the first African American woman to be honoured in the U.S. Capitol building – marks a long-overdue recognition of a prominent female African American figure and a historian who launched and popularised African American women’s history.