Recasting Mary McLeod Bethune’s Legacy

Abstract

From the 1930s until the time of her death in 1955, Mary McLeod Bethune was the most well-known African American woman in the United States. A race and gender leader commonly referred to as the “First Lady of the Struggle,” Bethune famously led the largest black women’s club, had regular meetings in the White House, and helped with the founding of the United Nations. Because of her achievements, Bethune’s name and likeness have been used on a U.S. postal stamp, numerous schools, and statues. This article examines two memorials to Bethune—showing how Bethune’s words and likeness have been used as a historical corrective, as well as an extension of the legacy that Bethune determined to leave before she died in 1955. First, I examine the National Council of Negro Women’s many frustrating years of fundraising for a Bethune memorial in Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C. That memorial, erected in 1974, became the first statue of a woman or an African American person dedicated on federal land in the U.S. capital. The second statue I examine is the 2022 statue of Bethune erected in the U.S. Capitol Building. There, the state of Florida decided to replace its long-standing statue of a white, male Confederate general in favor of a newly commissioned statue of Bethune, a black, female educator and civil rights leader as a way to rehabilitate and redefine the state’s image. Finally, the article shows how Bethune had hoped to be memorialized by her survivors, as evidenced in the form of an auto-eulogy, an essay that she wrote for future generations of readers.