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Freedom Isn't Divisible. But Mrs. Bethune has a faith in political action that Booker T. would never have tolerated. Says she: "Without the Negroes' exercise of the franchise, neither the white nor the black can be free." Eloquent Mary Bethune has been stumping the country for years against the poll tax, for the anti-lynching bill and the FEPC. Sometimes her good friend Eleanor Roosevelt shares the platform.
While Franklin Roosevelt was President, Mary Bethune often visited the White House. Once, on her way up the front walk, a white Southerner stopped her and said: "Auntie, what are you doing here?" Mrs. Bethune, who has learned to "discipline my resentments," just looked at him sweetly. Then she chirped: "Why, how do you do. Now which one of my sisters' children are you?"
Sit Right Down. In the depression F.D.R. picked Mrs. Bethune to boss the Negro division of the National Youth Administration, the highest Government job a Negress has held. He relied on her also for extracurricular advice about Negro problems. ("He'd say: 'Come right in, Mrs. Bethune, sit right down. Now tell me about your people.' ") Occasionally she tried to boss the Boss—shaking her fingers under his nose to demand more funds for a pet project. When the President died, Mrs. Roosevelt sent one of his canes to Mary McLeod Bethune—a carved stick with Franklin Roosevelt's initials on a silver band. Says Mrs. Bethune: "I swagger it sublimely. It gives me strength and courage and nothing to fear."
*Mrs. Bethune's school merged with the Methodist Cookman Institute (for Negro boys) in 1923.