Mary Mcleod Bethune’s life began in the same circumstances as many colored people during The Era Of Reconstruction. Bethune’s family was no exception to the entrapment that the withholding of civil rights caused. Bethune’s early realization that literacy could be used as a tool to potentially break and end the vicious cycle of degradation that occurred vapidly in her time would result in the founding of an amazing learning institute and years of service towards the cause of civil rights, her message of working for one’s self and compassion is still as powerful today as it was nearly a hundred years ago. Bethune was the only member in her family to attend school, a luxury for a child with sixteen other siblings. Bethune’s simple but poignant …show more content…
Bethune’s family in her early life had actually worked to acquire their own farmland, this correlation in self sufficiency can be seen in some of the early classes she taught in her Daytona School, which first included more domestic and creative works that imitated industrial creation, eventually these lessons expanded into more traditional subjects such as literacy, mathematics and business.. Bethune was wise to choose Daytona. Already the small town had begun to prosper more so than its counterparts; Palatka and the newly founded Miami, Florida’s development had been slower comparative to the rest of the U.S, visionaries such as Henry Flagler, Julia Tuttle and Bethune would change that . Bethune’s renowned skills in the classroom helped expand and educate, but also her business savvy, faith, indomitable spirit, creativity, fundraising genius and organizational wisdom were all crucial to the survival of what she had masterfully created. Bethune had rented a small house for the price of eleven dollars (today’s equivalent of about 200 dollars) and one dollar and fifty cents to begin teaching classes (approximately 25 by today’s standards). The school’s attendance began in the single digits, today Bethune’s legacy and efforts have amounted to the continued existence of the Bethune-Cookman University, which still resides in