Did You Know That...

On this day in 1875 Mary McLeod Bethune was born. On October 3, 1904, she opened her school in Daytona. Since she had only $1.50 in cash, it was necessary for her to scrounge to keep the school open. Describing the early days, Mrs. Bethune wrote, “We burned logs and used the charred splinters as pencils, and mashed elderberries for ink....I haunted the city dump and the trash piles behind the hotels, retrieving discarded linen and kitchenware, cracked dishes, broken chairs, pieces of old lumber. Everything was scoured and mended.” She achieved national prominence as an advisor to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Mrs. Roosevelt during the New Deal. In 1923, her school became Bethune-Cookman College and exists today as one of the great African-American institutions of higher learning.