The daughter of former slaves and among the youngest of 17 children, Mary McLeod Bethune became an educator, and a leader in the movements for civil and women’s rights. The college she founded, Bethune - Cookman, set educational standards for today’s black colleges and universities. A friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, in 1936 Bethune became the highest ranking African-American woman in government, when the President named her director of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration. She remained in that role until 1944. She was also a leader of FDR’s unofficial black cabinet. In 1940, she became vice president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Persons (NAACP), a position she held for the rest of her life.
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