Mary McLeod Bethune Delivers Report on Negro Youth to FDR
Mary McLeod Bethune, an African-American educator and civil rights leader, delivered to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on this day the report of the National Conference on the Problems of the Negro and Negro Youth, which was held January 6–8, 1937.
Bethune was a close friend to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and a member of the “Black Cabinet,” a group of African-American advisers to the First Lady and other sympathetic members of the administration. The conference on The Negro and Negro Youth was one of the few New Deal programs specifically directed toward African-Americans.
On December 6, 1935, Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women and received the NAACP’s highest honor, the Spingarn Medal. And on July 10, 1974 the Mary McCleod Bethune Memorial statue was dedicated in Washington, DC.
President Roosevelt himself did not support civil rights, both because of his personal attitudes about race and because he was dependent on the votes of Southern Democrats in Congress for his legislative program.
Visit the Bethune statue in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C.: http://dcmemorials.com/index_indiv0000230.htm
Learn abut Bethune and the “Back Caucus:” Jill Watts, The Black Cabinet: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt (2020)
Learn more: Mary McLeod Bethune, Audrey McCluskey, Elaine Smith, Mary McLeod Bethune: Building a Better World, Essays and Selected Documents (1999)
Watch a documentary on Mary McLeod Bethune: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWrdCu6a2DU
Learn more about Bethune at the National Women’s History Museum: https://www.nwhm.org/education-resources/biography/biographies/mary-mcleod-bethune/
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here