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STATE OF MAINE
_____
IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD
TWO THOUSAND TWENTY-FIVE
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JOINT RESOLUTION CELEBRATING THE LIFE OF MARY
MCLEOD BETHUNE
WHEREAS,
of the most important Black educators, civil rights and women's rights leaders and government
officials of the 20th century; and
WHEREAS,
and her role as an advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave African Americans an
advocate in government; and
WHEREAS,
last of Samuel and Patsy McLeod's 17 children. After the Civil War, Mary's mother worked
for her former owner until she could buy the land on which the family grew cotton. By age 9,
Mary could pick 250 pounds of cotton per day; and
WHEREAS,
graduating in 1894 from the Scotia Seminary, a boarding school in North Carolina. She next
attended Dwight Moody's Institute for Home and Foreign Missions in Chicago, Illinois. But
with no church willing to sponsor her as a missionary, she became an educator. While teaching
in South Carolina, she married fellow teacher Albertus Bethune, with whom she had a son in
1899; and
WHEREAS,
Presbyterian church and also sold insurance. In 1904, her marriage ended, and, determined to
support her son, she opened a boarding school, the Daytona Literary and Industrial Training
School for Negro Girls. Eventually, her school became a college, merging with the all-male
Cookman Institute to form Bethune-Cookman College in 1929. It issued its first degrees in
1943; and
WHEREAS,
organizations and led voter registration drives after women gained the right to vote in 1920,
risking racist attacks. In 1924, she was elected president of the National Association of Colored
Women's Clubs and, in 1935, she became the founding president of the National Council of
Negro Women. She also played a role in the transition of Black voters from the Republican
Party, "the party of Lincoln," to the Democratic Party during the Great Depression. A friend
of Eleanor Roosevelt, she became the highest-ranking African American woman in government
when President Franklin Roosevelt named her director of Negro Affairs of the National Youth
Administration in 1936. She remained there until 1944. She was also a leader of the president's
unofficial "Black Cabinet"; and
WHEREAS,
Negro and Negro Youth and fought to end discrimination and lynching. In 1940, she became
vice president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Persons, or
NAACP, a position she held for the rest of her life. As a member of the advisory board that in Page 2 - 132LR2436(01)
1942 created the Women's Army Corps, she ensured that the corps was racially integrated.
Appointed by President Harry S. Truman, she was the only woman of color at the founding
conference of the United Nations in 1945; and
WHEREAS,
Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender and was a businesswoman who co-owned a
Daytona, Florida resort and cofounded the Central Life Insurance Company of Tampa; and
WHEREAS,
1974 and a postage stamp in 1985, and her final residence is a National Historic Site. On July
13, 2022, she became the first African American to be represented with a state statue in the
National Statuary Hall Collection at the United States Capitol; now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED: That We, the Members of the One Hundred and Thirty-second Legislature
now assembled in the First Regular Session, take this occasion to honor the life and memory
of Mary McLeod Bethune, a great American, for her efforts to educate African Americans, her
political activism and advocacy in government and her championing of racial and gender
equality.