Mary McLeod Bethune

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wilson, and I'm Holly Frye. The other day, I was
scrolling on my phone and I got to a movie trailer.
I did not instantly know what movie this trailer could
be for, but then Carrie Washington said, Soldiers, I am
Captain Charity Adams, and I burst into tears. Uh. Maybe

(00:35):
I was.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Having a day, I don't know, but I was really
happy about the idea of the six Triple eight Central
Postal Directory Battalion getting a movie, so happy that I
started crying. And then a few seconds after that, I
instantly recognized Mary McLeod Bethune, who was being played by
Oprah Winfrey. Mary McLeod Bethune has been on my list

(00:59):
for a very long time. We have gotten tons of
listener requests for an episode about her, so this is
not a sponsored episode for this movie. I just decided
that this whole trailer experience was a sign that I
needed to move Mary McLeod Bethune up to.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
The top of the list.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
We are recording this on December the seventeenth, so the
movie is not out yet. It is scheduled to hit
Netflix on December twentieth, so it will be out by
the time the episode comes out. I have no idea
what people will think of this movie once they've seen it,
but it did inspire this episode today. Mary Jane McLeod

(01:38):
was born on July tenth, eighteen seventy five, near Maysville,
South Carolina. According to most sources, she was the fifteenth
of seventeen children born to Samuel and Patsy McLeod. Her
parents and older siblings had been enslaved, and some of
her oldest siblings had also been sold away from the
rest of the family. Once these siblings learned that they

(02:02):
had been freed, they made their way back to the
farm where Samuel had been enslaved, and from there they
all reunited with Mary's parents, meeting some of their grandchildren
for the first time. Of course, the Emancipation Proclamation was
issued on January first, eighteen sixty three, and the Thirteenth
Amendment abolishing slavery was ratified on December sixth, eighteen sixty five,

(02:25):
so this was years before Mary Jane McLeod was born,
and a lot of writing about her says that she
was the first in her family to be free from birth.
That idea really seems to be everywhere, including in full
length biographies that have been published about her just over
the last few years. But it does not appear to

(02:46):
be true, even if we kind of set aside the
Emancipation Proclamation, which Confederate authorities and enslavers might have refused
to recognize. She had at least two older siblings, Kissy
and William, who were born after eighteen sixty five. They're
listed on census records for eighteen seventy and eighteen eighty,

(03:07):
and in eighteen seventy their ages are listed as only
one and three. This is something we're going to talk
about some more on Friday, because I went down a
whole huge rabbit hole about it.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Samuel and Patsy were loving, strict and devoutly religious, welcoming
circuit riders whenever they passed through the area, and acting
as leaders in their Methodist church. They made their living
growing and selling cotton. After the end of the Civil War,
Patsy McLeod had continued to work for her former enslaver
as a cook until she was able to save up

(03:41):
enough money to buy five acres of land, and the
family eventually saved up enough to buy thirty more acres.
Patsy also took in laundry and did domestic work, and
it really took everyone, including the children, to support the family.
Before the end of the Civil War, it had been
illegal to educate enslaved people in South Carolina, and afterward,

(04:04):
many of Mary's older siblings, who were still school aged,
only had the opportunity to go to school when they
had access to one for black students, and also when
they weren't needed on the farm.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
In an interview that she gave later on in her life,
Bethune described herself as different from her siblings, even down
to just liking different foods. Her older sisters wanted to
get married early, but she really did not. Instead, she
described herself as having a missionary spirit and a desire
to do things for other people, including doing things like

(04:39):
sharing her shoes with children who didn't have any. Her
family seems to have seen her as different as well,
but they also supported her in that difference. She also
really really wanted to learn how to read when her
reformative experiences in her childhood happened when she accompanied her

(04:59):
mother to work at the home of a white family.
One day, when Mary picked up a book in the
playhouse where this family's children did their schoolwork, one of
them told her to put it down because she could
not read, and in her words, quote, it just did
something to my pride and to my heart. So in
eighteen eighty five, when seventeen year old Emma Jane Wilson

(05:21):
came to the farm looking for children to teach at
the newly established Trinity Chapel Presbyterian Mission School in Maysville,
Mary was allowed to go. She had to walk four
or five miles each way every day to get there,
and when she got home she would try to teach
her family everything that she had learned. She also started
helping to handle things that required literacy or math skills,

(05:44):
like selling the cotton crop. Learning itself was also just
a joy. In miss Hunes's words, quote, the whole world
opened to me when I learned to read. Wilson was
a patient, dedicated and caring teacher, but within a couple
of years, who sometimes also was called Mary Jane. When
she was little, she'd learned what she could from the school,

(06:07):
but then she learned that a scholarship was available to
continue her education at Scotia Seminary, a Presbyterian seminary that's
now Barber Scotia College in Concord, North Carolina. There she
was in the school's chorus and on the debate team,
and she was often a soloist at church. She graduated
from there on June thirteenth, eighteen eighty four. Mary Jane

(06:31):
McLeod was devoutly religious. She started every day with meditation
and scripture reading, and for a long time her dream
had been to become a missionary and to go to Africa.
She learned about another scholarship, this time to Dwight Moody's
Institute for Home and Foreign Missions in Chicago, Illinois that's
now Moody's Bible Institute, and she found out this was

(06:54):
a place where she could train to do that work
she had thought of. Her education up to this point
had been at schools for black students, but at the
Bible Institute she was the only black student. Her coursework included.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
Bible and music study, as well as practical work doing
things like visiting people in their homes, local missions, and jails.
But when she applied to become a missionary in Africa,
she was denied. According to her account, later on, the
Presbyterian Mission Board told her it did not have any
openings for a black missionary in Africa. She was deeply

(07:31):
upset about this, and for a time she went back
home to South Carolina. When the Mission Board told her
it had an appointment for her at the Haines Institute
in Augusta, Georgia, she went there. After teaching in Augusta
for a while, she moved on to Sumter, South Carolina,
to work at another Presbyterian mission school. There she sang

(07:52):
in the church choir, which is where she met Albertus Bethune.
They got married on May six, eighteen ninety eight, and
afterwards they moved to Savannah. Their son, Albertus Mclodbithune, was
born there on February third, eighteen eighty nine.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
In most biographies of Mary Mcleodbethune, her husband Albertas just
sort of disappears to an extent. Her son does as well.
She was intensely private about her personal life. This was
something that was necessary given society's expectations of women, especially
of black women, and the need to always be seen

(08:29):
as respectable in her public persona. She gave an interview
much later on in her life, in which she described
her husband as a fine young man with a beautiful
tenor voice and an interest in their church activities, but
not really in her educational pursuits. At the same time,
in the same interview, she said that their marriage and

(08:50):
the birth of their child were not intended to impede
to the things that she inspired that she aspired to do.
Seems like her husband didn't get in the way of
her work, but also didn't really participate in it.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
Through a church connection, Bisune learned about a parochial school
in Palatka, Florida that needed a teacher, and the family
moved there. She also made some extra money selling life
insurance to black families, and she continued doing what we
might think of as missionary and social work, like visiting
people who were being held in local jails. In nineteen

(09:28):
oh two, she started trying to open a school of
her own. She wrote to people like Booker T. Washington
and Robert Curtis Ogden to try to get their support
and funding. This kind of fundraising is something she would
continue to do for the rest of her career, including
later on writing to Julius ROSENWALDT We talked about Rosenwald's
efforts to fund schools for black children in August twenty

(09:51):
twenty one, when Holly interviewed Andrew Feiler about his book
on these schools. In nineteen oh four, the family moved
to Daytona Beach. Bethune had heard that a school was
desperately needed there and also thought there might be more
opportunities than she had had in Palatka. She opened the
Daytona Beach Literary and Industrial School for training Negro girls.

(10:15):
The school started out, in her words, with quote five
little girls, a dollar and a half and faith in God.
She taught reading, writing, and home economics, and her six
year old son was also a student. At first, the
school occupied one room in a cabin that she was renting,
and since they had no furniture, the students sat on

(10:36):
dry goods boxes. But this school grew rapidly, and within
just two years she had two hundred and fifty students.
Sometime around nineteen oh seven, Bethune's marriage ended for all
practical purposes, and her husband returned to South Carolina. There's
no real documentation of what happened, but since he died

(10:57):
in nineteen eighteen of tuberculosis. There's some speculation that maybe
he was ill and he needed more care than she
could provide for him, so he returned to his family.
Bethune never remarried, and she listed her status on the
nineteen ten census as widowed. Her work with the school
continued after this, and we'll get into that after a

(11:19):
sponsor break.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
The school Mary McLeod Bethune established in Daytona Beach continued
to grow through the early nineteen hundreds, and in nineteen
oh seven she raised money to buy land for a
new campus. That was land that the city had previously
been using as a dump site, so there was also
cleanup involved. The first new building to be constructed there

(11:51):
was called Faith Hall, and later editions would include things
like an administration building with an auditorium and more classroom space.
This on its own was an enormous effort, and it
wasn't the only thing that Bethune was doing. In nineteen
oh seven, she also established a mission to provide aid
and education to turpentine workers who were living in camps

(12:12):
outside of the city. Due to segregation, Daytona Beach and
the surrounding area had no hospital that would treat black patients,
so in nineteen eleven, Bethune opened one, naming it McLeod
Hospital after her parents. It started out with just a
couple of beds, and it was staffed by doctors as
well as students at a nursing program that she also established.

(12:35):
That hospital ran until nineteen twenty seven, and during those
years many of its patients received care for free because
they had no money to pay. Bethune realized she needed
a partner to help her manage this ever growing school,
and in nineteen twelve she went to New York to
try to convince Francis Reynolds Kaiser to come to Florida

(12:56):
and work with her. Bethune knew Kaiser by reputae, but
not personally. Kaiser was a respected educator who had previously
started a school for black children in Florida that had
run for four years. When she and Bethune met, Kaiser
was director of the White Rose Mission, which was focused
on the needs of black women and girls who had

(13:17):
just arrived in New York from the South.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
This mission offered.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
Services like traveler's aid, shelter, job training, and assistance in
finding work. After they talked, Kaiser agreed to come and
the two women immediately committed themselves to both a personal
and a professional relationship, in Bethune's words, pledging their allegiance
to God and to each other on bended knees and

(13:41):
with clasped hands in her rented room in New York.
Bithune and Kaiser lived and worked together for the next
twelve years until Kaiser became disabled due to arthritis and
other medical conditions and decided to return to New York.
The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on all
August eighteenth, nineteen twenty, giving women the right to vote

(14:03):
across the United States. As we've talked about on the
show several times before, because of things like discriminatory laws
and voter intimidation. In practice, this mostly applied to white women.
Recognizing all of this, Bethune started a massive voter registration
campaign four black women in Daytona Beach, and in response,

(14:26):
she was targeted by the Ku Klux Klan, including clan
members marching on her school while the students were there.
She did not back down, though she also continued to
face this kind of harassment and retaliation for her work
throughout her life, including from the Klan and then later
on during the McCarthy era from people who baselessly accused her.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
Of being a communist. By nineteen twenty, Bethune School had
grown to the point that it was the second largest
school for black girls and young women in the United States,
behind Spelman's Seminary in it Atlanta. That year, she was
also elected to the National Urban League's executive board. In
nineteen twenty three, she became the first woman to serve

(15:08):
as president of the National Association of Teachers of Colored Schools.
A year later, she was elected president of the National
Association of Colored Women's Clubs, which at the time was
the largest political organization for black women in the United States.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
In nineteen twenty seven, Bethune met some people who would
go on to have a huge impact on the next
years of her life, and the same was true of
her impact on them. They were Eleanor and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Franklin's mother, Sarah, was hosting a meeting for the leaders
of prominent women's groups at her home. As the story goes,

(15:45):
Bethune was the only black person there and everybody was
avoiding her, but Eleanor Roosevelt made a point of sitting
next to her.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
Bethune and Roosevelt were close friends and colleagues for the
rest of their lives, and their friendship was mutually beneficial
for both of them. Bethune was a huge source of
insight and knowledge for Roosevelt as she approached her own
work on social and political issues, including women's rights. Bethune
was already highly respected as an educator, and she had

(16:15):
an influential leadership role in multiple national organizations focused on
education and civil rights for black people, but starting in
nineteen thirty three, her relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt also gave
her direct, ongoing access to the President of the United States.
Bethune had been involved with other presidential administrations before this,

(16:37):
including attending presidential conferences on child welfare during the presidencies
of Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. She always stressed that
she was an educator, not a politician, but she also
deeply understood that no matter how hard black educators, organizers,
and activists worked, and how much they did for themselves,

(17:00):
there needed to be robust government policies on issues like education, housing,
voting rights, racial integration, and civil rights to make real change.
Bethune's involvement with Roosevelt in his administration also led her
to change her political party from Republicans a Democrat, and
she campaigned for his re election in nineteen thirty six.

(17:22):
To circle back to the school, in nineteen twenty nine,
Daytona Beach Literary and Industrial School merged with the Cookman Institute,
originally the Cookman Institute for Boys of Jacksonville, Florida. The
combined institute was initially called the Daytona Cookman Collegiate Institute,
and it was affiliated with the Methodist Church. Bisune hoped

(17:43):
that this connection to the church would bring more consistent
funding to the school. Although this did work to an extent,
the school didn't get as much funding as she had hoped,
and Bisune had to do extensive fundraising during the Great
Depression to try to offset that short form. During the
work and strain of all of this, at one point

(18:04):
she collapsed and had to spend several months in the hospital.
The institute survived the Great Depression, though, and it was
accredited by the Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools of
the Southern States as a junior college. In nineteen thirty two.
It began awarding its first baccalaureate degrees in nineteen forty three.

(18:24):
Today it's known as BIS June Cookman University and it
has more than three thousand students.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
In nineteen thirty two, Francis Reynolds Kaiser died at the
age of sixty seven. Although she hadn't been able to
do physical work during the last years of her life
because of her health and her disabilities, she had continued
to write and to advocate. Through writing, Bethune had helped
to support her financially, and after her death wrote a

(18:50):
memorial in which she described Kaiser as a rare gift
of providence and their personal and professional relationship as a
quote spiritual union and community union that can never be described.
In nineteen thirty five, Bethune became the founding president of
the National Council of Negro Women, or NCNW, serving in
that role until nineteen forty nine. That same year, she

(19:14):
was awarded the Spingarn Award, which is the NAACP's highest honor.
From nineteen thirty six to nineteen forty two, Bethune partially
stepped back from her role as president of Bethune Cookman
College so that she could spend more time in Washington
d C. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had named her Director

(19:34):
of Negro Affairs at the National Youth Administration. The National
Youth Administration was part of the New Deal, and it
was set up as a department under the Works Progress Administration.
The National Youth Administration provided education, training, and work study
programs for people between the ages of sixteen and twenty five.

(19:55):
Bethune recognized that black people would be left out of
New Deal programs unless black communities advocated for their inclusion,
and the government intentionally worked to do that. So she
did extensive work to promote National Youth Administration programs and
outreach specifically for black youth, and to promote the involvement

(20:15):
of young black people in these government programs. She was
so effective at doing this that the Roosevelt administration established
a whole new department, the Division of Negro Affairs, ultimately
making Bethune its director in nineteen thirty eight. She remained
in this role until nineteen forty four. During this time,

(20:36):
she retired as president of Bethune Cookman College, in part
because she experienced a serious illness, but then she returned
to that role in nineteen forty six to add to
all of her other leadership roles. She became vice president
of the NAACP in nineteen forty and she held that
position for the rest of her life. And she was

(20:57):
also one of the educators who came together to establish
the United Negro College Fund in nineteen forty four. During
these years in Washington, Bethune was also part of an
informal group of presidential advisors known as the Federal Council
on Negro Affairs, more commonly known as the Black Cabinet
or the Black brain Trust. This started with a group

(21:20):
of just a handful of people who met at Bethune's Washington,
d c.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
Home to talk about how they could work together and,
in her words, quote give momentum to the great ball
that is starting to roll for Negroes. This group grew
eventually involving more than fifty people who were working in
various positions within the executive branch of the government and
New Deal agencies. Bethune was particularly prominent and influential among

(21:45):
this group, both because of her experienced knowledge and ongoing advocacy,
and also because her friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt gave her
so much access to the president In addition to working
to make sure that black people and communities had access
to New Deal programs, this group advocated for the federal
government to take a stand against lynching and to work

(22:07):
to abolish discriminatory poll taxes and unpassable literacy tests that
were preventing black people from exercising their right to vote.
They also advocated for anti discrimination efforts within the federal government.
This advocacy took place publicly and behind the scenes, and
it also involved people outside of Washington, d c. For example,

(22:29):
we've talked about the efforts of a. Philip Randolph in
the Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters in our prior episodes
on each of them.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
On June twenty fifth, nineteen forty one, President Roosevelt issued
Executive Order eighty eight O two prohibiting race based discrimination
in the defense industry and in the federal government. Afterward,
Bethune wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt, thanking her for her support
and encouraging the President to do this. Of course, this

(22:59):
executive order was connected to World War Two, and we're
going to get into that after we paused for a
sponsor break. Executive Order eighty eight two was issued before
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and the US

(23:22):
declaration of war against Japan. But war related industries had
already been scaling up, both because the United States was
offering support to the Allied nations and because of the
possibility that the US would become directly involved in the
Second World War. This had created a ton of new jobs,

(23:43):
and Executive Order eighty eight O two was meant to
help make sure that those jobs would be open to
black workers, and that black people would also be able
to work in them without facing racism or harassment on
the job. There was also ongoing advocacy for the millitary
to be racially integrated, but that integration did not happen

(24:04):
until after the war. Once the US became directly involved
in World War Two, Bethune also advocated for black people
to serve in the armed forces. In her words quote
this is America's war and we two are Americans. In
nineteen forty two, Bethune was part of the board that
established the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps later the Women's Army Corps,

(24:26):
and she worked to ensure that there would also be
units established for black women. One of these units was
the six Triple eight Central Postal Directory Battalion. Our episode
on Them ran as a Saturday Classic on March twenty six,
twenty twenty two, and the movie On Them is, of
course what inspired this episode. Bethune advocated for black women

(24:47):
to be included in the navvies women accepted for Volunteer
Emergency Services or waves as well. She was also named
an Honorary General in the Women's Army for National Defense
that was a volunteer organization for black women in support
of the war effort. In addition to her focus on
black women, Bethune also advocated for traditionally black colleges and

(25:10):
universities to be included in the Civilian Pilot Training Program,
which brought new opportunities to train as pilots. One of
the most famous units to come from this program was
the Tuskegee Airmen.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
Although there were black.

Speaker 2 (25:24):
Women who trained as pilots through these programs, the Women
Air Force Service pilots, who we have also covered on
the show did not include black women. In the last
months of World War II, a conference was held in
San Francisco, California, to draft the charter for an international
organization that would work to help preserve peace around the world.

(25:45):
The result was the United Nations, which was formally established
on October twenty fourth, nineteen forty five. Bethune was one
of the delegates to this conference, appointed by President Harry
AS Truman. She advocated for the UN Charter TiO to
include a focus on equal rights regardless of race, sex,
and religion. She later wrote an open letter about this

(26:07):
work in which she said, quote through this conference, the
negro becomes closely allied with the darker races of the world,
but more importantly, he becomes integrated into the structure of
the peace and freedom of all people everywhere. That same year,
Bethune started working with real estate developers to form Bethunevlusha

(26:27):
Beach Corporation. Its purpose was to buy ocean front property
in Daytona Beach to establish a beach that was not
only accessible to black people, but was.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
Also black owned.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
A few years later, Bethune also pooled funds with three
other investors to start a hotel there that would welcome
black visitors.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
In October of twenty twenty two, we did an episode
on Paul Robison and the Peaskill Riots, and we talked
about how he faced widespread condemnation after a performance and
speech at the Paris Peace Congress in nineteen forty nine.
English language news reports, one of them, filed before he
had even started to speak, didn't match up to a

(27:10):
French transcript of his extemporaneous remarks, and claimed that he
had compared the US government to Hitler and Gebels. Prominent
Black figures were called on to denounce Robison in his remarks,
including Bethune, who said quote, mister Robison does not speak
for Negroes who have always remained loyal to American ideals,
even when there are weak points in those ideals.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
Butthoon traveled in the United States and internationally at various
points in her life, but two notable trips took place
after World War II. One was to Haiti in nineteen
forty nine, where she was invited to receive the Medal
of Honor and Merit, which was Haiti's highest civilian honor. Then,
in nineteen fifty two, at the age of seventy six,

(27:57):
she finally fulfilled her dream of going to Africa as
part of a delegation to Liberia from President Harry Truman.
While there, she was also awarded Liberia's highest Medal, which
was the Order of the Star of Africa. Mary McLeod
Bethune retired as president of Bethune Workman College in nineteen
forty eight and as president of the National Council of

(28:19):
Negro Women NCNW in nineteen forty nine. She had been
writing extensively for newspapers, journals, and magazines, and she continued
to do this after her retirement from other more active roles.
This included writing a regular column for The Chicago Defender.
In nineteen fifty three, she established the Mary McLeod Bethune

(28:41):
Foundation on the Bethune Cookman campus to house her papers
and to continue her work and legacy. She also gave
her on campus home, which she called the Refuge to
the Foundation. Mary McLoud Bethune died of a heart attack
at home on May eighteenth, nineteen fifty five, at the
age of five seventy nine. She was buried on the campus

(29:03):
of Bethune Cookman University two days later. Eleanor Roosevelt wrote
about her in her My Day column. Roosevelt described Bethune
as having a deep religious faith that was both a
weapon and a shield, and is thinking that God would
hear her prayers if the things she was asking for
were good. In Roosevelt's words, quote, she helped herself and

(29:24):
the Lord helped her. This mirrored something that beth June
had liked to say about herself, which is that I
have faith in God and Mary Bethune. Before her death,
Bethune had written what she called her Last Will and Testament.
This is not a legal document, but a reflection on
her work and what she felt she was leaving to

(29:45):
the world. This was published in Ebony magazine in August
of nineteen fifty five and has been widely reprinted since then.
She wrote about realizing that death would overtake her before
the greatest of her dreams could be re reed, that being,
in her words quote, full equality for the negro in

(30:05):
our time. Her Last Will and Testament described her thoughts
on leaving a legacy involving things like love, hope, racial dignity,
and a desire to live harmoniously with your fellow man.
It's a really beautiful essay and you can find it
online at the Bethune Cookman University website and in many
other places. During her lifetime, Mary mcleodbith June was awarded

(30:30):
eleven honorary degrees, including nine honorary doctorates. She had become
known across the US as the First Lady of the
Struggle or the first Lady of Negro America. In nineteen
seventy three, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall
of Fame. A year later, a statue of her was
unveiled at Lincoln Park, Washington, d C. Commissioned using funds

(30:52):
raised by the NCNW, it depicts her with two children.
She's holding her.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
Cane in one hand. She pad the whole collection of
them because she thought they conferred dignity, or, as she
phrased it, it gave her swank. This was the first
memorial to a black person in a public park in Washington,
d C. Bethune was also on a postage stamp in
nineteen eighty five, making her the second black woman to
be depicted on a US postage stamp. Her townhouse in Washington,

(31:23):
d C, that had served as the headquarters for the
nc and W became Mary McLeod Bethune Council House, part
of the National Park System in nineteen ninety five. The
council House is also home to the National Archives for
Black Women's History and the NCNW still exists today. Her
former home on the Bethune Cookman University campus is also

(31:46):
now the Mary McLoud Bethune Foundation National Historic Landmark. On
January thirteenth, twenty twenty two, a statue of her was
placed in the National Statuary Hall in Washington, d C.
Replacing a stafe of Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith as
one of the two statues from the state of Florida.
She is sculpted in white, wearing academic garb with a

(32:09):
mortar board with a cane in one hand and a
black rose in the other. She had started referring to
her students as black roses after seeing some growing in
a Swiss garden. This sculpture was made by Nilda Komas,
the first person of Puerto Rican descent to sculpt a
statue for the National Statuary Hall Collection. Both the monument

(32:30):
in Lincoln Park and the statue in the National Statuary
Hall Collection reference Bethune's last Will and Testament. The Lincoln
Park memorial has a bronze band that runs around the
base reading quote I leave you love, I leave you hope,
I leave you the challenge of developing confidence in one another.
I leave you a thirst for education. I leave you

(32:52):
a respect for the use of power. I leave you
also a desire to live harmoniously with your fellow man.
I leave you you faith, I leave you racial dignity.
I leave you finally, a responsibility to our young people.
And then the statue in the National Statuary Hall has
a stack of books at her feet, and the one
on top with the visible cover says I leave you

(33:14):
on the cover, and then the spines reference the things
that she left. That's Mariam Cloud Bethune. She's amazing.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
She's really truly amazing. I also have some listener mail
from Kyle. Kyle wrote, high, Holly and Tracy, you two
do such a fantastic job. I've never felt the need
to write in I was listening to the first part
of Eli S. Parker, and as you were talking about
him living along the Grand River and working with the Army,

(33:44):
I was driving over the Grand River in Kitchener, Ontario.
That felt like a sign that I should email my
two favorite history teachers and let them know how much
I appreciate the content and lessons you put out each week.
I also wanted to mention briefly the history of kitchen,
which you both might find interesting. Prior to World War One,
it had a very large German population and was named Berlin. Obviously,

(34:08):
this wasn't a good look for the town and it
had an amusing naming vote during this period. There was
also an army recruiting officer that formed a gang of
youths to intimidate enlistments, and a stolen bust of Kaiser Wilhelm.
I doubt any of this would make a good episode,
but I think it has the charm to make a
segment on a Six Impossible Stories episode. Thanks so much

(34:31):
for all the content and making my drive more enjoyable.
Here is your pet, tax Odin, all gray, no teeth,
one eye. Odin is a great name for a one
eyed animal. Jellybean white and gray ham all black, bagel,
obnoxiously cute little kitten all the best Kyle. So yes,

(34:51):
we have four very adorable pictures of very adorable animals.

Speaker 1 (34:56):
Babies of I looked a little bit into this whole
renaming of Berlin into Kitchener story, and it does seem
like it was a wild ride. So I don't know.
Maybe it will be a Six Impossible Episodes one day,

(35:18):
maybe not. Who can say, But I did amuse myself
reading about it this morning.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
It is hard to say which of these cats I
think is the cutest cat. I mean there's something about
a one eyed yeah, you know, just a cat that's
got a little bit of a scruffy look as great.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
Well, and then since Odin is all gray, no teeth,
one eye, I also have a fondness my cats do
have some teeth.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
They both have fewer teeth right than they started with,
because they are both apparently genetically prone to some dental problems,
regardless of how much work we put into Yeah, at
our house we had two littermates. We still have Ozol.
His littermate clearly had a different dad than him because

(36:08):
he got the genetic bad teeth situation. And Ozl has
never had a tooth issue. And I'm yeah, yeah, So
thank you again so much for this email, Kyle. If
you'd like to send us a note about this or
any other podcast, we're at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.

(36:29):
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Tracy Wilson

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