We have concluded that they are at least among these: most persons who attain to greatness can boast at least family status, as a beginning, or a tradition of education which permits an even start with the world: or the advantage of economic position, or of class, or a race favored by circumstances inherent in that status. 

The important factor to me seems to rest in the fact that you had none of these at the beginning – none of these advantages – but, instead you had every conspicuous disadvantage upon which our modern society has placed a valuation.

 In the first place, sex is a disadvantage, although not entirely so.  There has been historically an advantage in mixed blood, and you represent an unmixed ancestry, like a large majority of the submerged Negro population.  You came from a part of the country steeped in general and mass backwardness from which emergence is especially difficult.  There was no advantage of wealth; there was no tradition of education nor of any important degree of participation in what we are pleased to call our American civilization.

 In overcoming these on your own initiative and drive, and lighting your own path from some inner fire, it was inevitable that this spiritual quality would take possession of the personality itself….. until at a point of full maturity it becomes difficult to distinguish between Mary Bethune as a person and Mary Bethune as a social and spiritual institution.

 The thing that I am interested in now is some of the scars, some of the bruises that – like the bruises on an oyster produce a pearl.

 Every life is full of them – that is, every life that has eventually grown around them into major stature.  Some of the early injuries to the personality: incidents – any one will do to start with………in thinking of an early hurt, whether racial, personal, or class.

Mrs. Bethune:  I think that possibly the first and real wound that I could feel in my soul and my mind was the realization of the dense darkness and ignorance that I found in myself – when I did find myself – with the seeming absence of a remedy.  What I mean by that was the recognition of the lack of opportunity.

I could see little white boys and girls going to school every day, learning to read and write; living in comfortable homes with all types of opportunities for growth and service and to be surrounded as I was with no opportunity for school life, no chance to grow – I found myself very often yearning all along for the things that were being provided for the white children with whom I had to chop cotton every day, or pick corn, or whatever my task happened to be.

 I think that actually, the first hurt that came to me in my childhood was the contrast of what was being done for the white children and the lack of what we got.

Johnson:  At what age did this occur?

Bethune:  Around nine or ten years.

Johnson:  Sometimes we may be feeling that thing under the surface for a long time and a little instance touches it off.  Do you remember any such?

Bethune:    My mother kept in rather close contact with the people she served as a slave.  She continued to cook for her master until she owned five acres of land.  He deeded her five acres.  The cabin, my father and brothers built.  It was the cabin in which I was born. 

She kept up these relations.  Very often I was taken along after I was old enough, and on one of these occasions I remember my mother went over to do some special work for this family of Wilsons, and I was with her.  I went out into what they called their play house in the yard where they did their studying.  They had pencils, slates, magazines and books. 

I picked up one of the books . . . .  and one of the girls said to me – “You can’t read that – put that down.  I will show you some pictures over here,” and when she said to me “You can’t read that– put that down” it just did something to my pride and to my heart that made me feel that some day I would read just as she was reading. 

I did put it down, and followed her lead and looked at the picture book that she had.  But I went away from there determined to learn how to read and that some day I would master for myself just what they were getting and it was that aim that I followed.
 

One day we were out in the field picking cotton and the mission teacher came from Maysville, five miles away, and told mother and father that the Presbyterian church had established a mission where the Negro children could go and that the children would be allowed to go.  I was among the first of the young ones to enroll, and …. so it seemed to me.

 That first morning on my way to school I kept the thought uppermost “Put that down – you can’t read,” and I felt that I was on my way to read and it was one of the incentives that fired me in my determination to read.  And I think that because of that I grasped my lessons and my words better than the average child and it was not long before I was able to read and write.
 

Johnson:  What was the attitude of your mother?  Or, did you tell her about it?

Bethune:  Yes, I told her.  You know, my mother was one of those grand educated persons that did not have letters.  She had a great vision, a great understanding of human nature.  When I told her, that instant, you know, she said to me – “Oh, never mind, my child, your time will come.  You will learn some day.” 

 My mother had a great philosophy of life.  She came down from one of the great royalties of Africa.  She could not be discouraged.  No matter what kind of plight we found ourselves in, she always believed there was, through prayer and work, a way out.  And it was one of the greatest things she stimulated life with….that determination that there was a way out if we put forth effort ourselves.

Johnson:  Did you ever hear her call the name of the African race of tribe she belonged to?

Bethune:  If so, it has passed out of my memory.

Johnson:  Do you remember any words that suggested continuity of any African tradition?

Bethune:  No.  My mother was very, very, dark with soft, keen features: small of stature.  She wasn’t large.  I  took my robustness from my father.  My father wasn’t as strong willed as my mother.  He was very kindly disposed, very sympathetic.  My mother’s will power and drive gave the impetus that held our household together.  The majority in our family married off early.
 

 There were seventeen of us, you know.   I had nieces and nephews far older than myself.  There were seventeen full sisters and brothers and it took my mother’s spirit to build a home. 

Father and my brothers got the logs that built the cabin, the cabin where I was born – I was born in our own home cabin, and on our own soil.

Johnson:  Were any older brothers born during slavery?

Bethune:  Oh, yes.  Some of my older sisters and brothers belonged to slave masters….some were scattered….

My father was a McLeod – my mother was a McIntosh; they handed her on down to Ben Wilson who was one of the family – I think (?) the husband of one of the girls, one of the daughters, and it was this Ben Wilson for whom she continued to cook.

Johnson:  How did the family reassemble after slavery, or do you remember.…?

Bethune:  Oh, yes.  They were not sold very far apart and after slavery they all reassembled on the old McLeod place where my father was and took their stations in life.

Johnson:  Do you remember anything, their telling any stories about how the first got together after freedom?

Bethune:  My oldest brother Samuel, and my oldest sister, Satira – odd names, eh! – heard tell when freedom came.  They did not know they were actually free until called together a few days after, and they eventually found their way back to where my father was and father brought mother home on the McLeod plantation and they all assembled for a family reunion.  They brought the grand children that mother and father had not seen. 

When my son Albert was born, he was my mother’s ninetieth grand child – my family was very productive.  My sisters had ten, twelve and thirteen children – a very productive family.  They found their way into motherhood and fatherhood very early in life, because there was no opportunity opened up to them.  They settled largely in …. And some of them, of course developed…..

None of them had much opportunity, none of the older ones had the opportunity for any kind of academic training that could give them a clear vision of the full life they were capable of living.  My two sisters over me – Julia and Rebecca, did learn after they were grown, how to read, and were able to get hold of some ideas.  And my brother, immediately over me – William Thomas – got some opportunities after he was grown, to learn to read some.

Johnson:  It might be well here to have you name your sisters and brothers, possibly chronologically….

Bethune:  Let’s see, now if I can – there was Sally, she was the oldest, then Satira, Samuel, Julia, Kissie, Kelly, Carrie, (all old fashioned and odd names) Beauregard (named in honor of General Beauregard), Cecelia, Rebecca, Magdalena (we called her Margie), Mary Jane (myself, of course), Mattie Bell, William Thomas, Monday (a common S.C. name)….

Johnson:  What do you suppose it was – you had no one to suggest this to you originally  that you desired something better than you were getting.  Most children born in situations like this accept this as their lot in life and never feel any different about it.

Bethune:   My mother said when I was born I was entirely different from the rest – I was the most homely child, I was just different.  In the ordinary things the children engaged in I wouldn’t.  I had the type of leadership like my mother.  She said I was just different from the others. 

My taste for food was different.  I would just look at it and not eat it.  I had my own ideas about even that.  I had just a different setting (?) in my acceptance of things from the rest of the children, and she very early detected that I was just a little different.  My older sisters wanted to get married early.  I had no inclinations that way.  I had more of a missionary spirit – the spirit of doing things for others. 

Any one sick in the community, I would tantalize my mother to make them some soup.  If any child had no shoes, I always wanted to share my shoes.  She had to watch me to keep me from giving away things that were mine.

 Mother used to make grape wine….the other children drank it.  I did not care for it.  I did not have the same tastes as they.  My ideas were somewhat different.  My mother was quite proud of it..she felt “Here comes one of the children who is going to do something in life… My father felt the same way.  The children themselves were proud of me.  They were not mean to me about it.  My family all conceded to me in my ideas.

I was particular about things, but they accepted my leadership from those days to this moment and looked to me as the one in the family that might go places and they were willing to concede to my ideas because I was always striving to set up something that was going in the opposite direction from the general mass of things and doing…  And, of course, after I got just a little mental training I had a very definite creative mind that I would put into operation such things as would inspire and help them.

Johnson:  Were there any other colored children around your age?  What was their outlook?

Bethune:  There was nothing for them to aspire to – it was an incentive to me, and of course, many followers after that.  Many boys and girls of the community.  A new life came into the district. 

Sunday afternoon I would take the farm children for miles around – I would give them whatever I had learned during the week..Poetry, reading, songs, etc…I would give to them as often as I got.  As I got I gave.  They gave me a broader capacity for taking in and I feel that up to today, I feel it in all things, and I feel that as I give I get.

Of course I became a very definite favorite in the family – my mother, father, sisters and brothers, people in the community all loved me. I never had difficulty getting people to follow me.  Never, from the start.  They seemed to realize the seriousness and unselfishness of my motives. 

When I got so I could do the counting, all the papers—of both the whites and colored people—were put into my lap—the papers showing the weights of the cotton, and how much…from the weighing of the cotton.  When we went to pick cotton for white people they said, “Let Mary Jane put down the number of pounds.” 

I became useful..I won the respect and admiration.  I made my learning, what little it was, just from the beginning, spell service and cooperation, rather than something that would put me above the people around me. 

When I went off to school and came back I was accepted and looked forward to my coming back.  They knew that whatever I had, they knew I would adapt to use of the people there.  Those were great days when the masses needed the few who could read or write so badly. 

As I look now, you are opening deep channels where I can look down through the channel of years.  There were people looking to someone who would come and lead them, to teach them, to organize them into….. singing schools, etc.

Johnson:  Was there not some individual who gave you a special thrill because you were able to see your knowledge transferred to his life or her life in such a way that they could recognize it.  Some older persons who had sought new life, some young person who had been with you and could recognize it?

Bethune:  I think the very first thrill I got from being able to transfer a desire for learning and the buckling down to getting something was from my own brother who was older than I was. 

When he saw what it was doing for me and that I was able to help him master his letters, and words do that he could open his eyes, and he could see and he began to realize what it meant to get some learning and to, himself, be awakened to such extent as to go ten miles at night to the Maysville village and attend night school until all could read, write and apply himself. 

Things got and remembered was what he got, what my immediate family got and the awakening came to mother and father when able to sit down and read the newspapers and magazines and the Bible to them – that they had in their own home somebody who could do that—that was the greatest thrill. 

Of course, that was just the beginning of the thousands and thousands of lives that have been touched and awakened all along the way.

Johnson:  I am very much interested in seeing just how a kind of family setting – however impoverished it may be, may have something that would set a person off…How did this radiate in the community?

Bethune:  In this way – that a new standard for living was set up in many of the homes and different little school centers were set up and workers who did not have much money, but more than they had before; and the little Sunday School, and the little chorus, and things of that kind.  It brought about a growth – a desire for learning.  It gave to the masses there an understanding that they just did not have to continue in darkness – that there was a chance.

Johnson:  What did the white people around Sumter community feel about Negroes getting an education at that time?

Bethune:  They thought it was folly; that we did not need an education and that our part was to do chores on the farm.  But I thought it was remarkable the way they accepted me when I came back – how they used me to put down their figures for them… sent me… seemed then that every Negro boy and girl who could read and write could be of great service on the farm.
You see I became a help. 

We kept on growing.  The majority of schools kept on growing.  I thank God for the Presbyterian church and from whom so many little county school were begun.

Johnson:  Who was the person who came and told you about that school?

Bethune:  The Presbyterian church sent a woman, Miss Emma Wilson, a very far Negro---couldn’t tell her from white—she was the first person in the…we knew to call “Miss”. 

She was employed to start school in Sumter County near Maysville.  She had gone to Scotia and had gotten some education.  Came from Manning, South Carolina.

Johnson:  Describe the mission as you remember first going into it.

Bethune:  It was a small church.  There were some home-made benches, a little table, and desks, a little pulpit, a little wood stove in the corner. 

The first morning…had a blackboard on the wall…The first morning I went in, Miss Wilson was standing at the door and received me.  There was a crowd of boys and girls – most of them very crudely dressed.. just as you find in any rural school today.  We had our little singing that morning, prayer, Bible lesson.  We were started on our way to learning.

 The things that affected me most about Miss Wilson were her patience, and her tenderness and kindly way in which she handled us.  The beautiful smile which was always kept on her face.  We were not afraid of her.  We could approach her at any time.

Johnson:  What was the length of time for which she contacted your life?

Bethune:  She remained there continuously after that.
 

 To continue reading this document, go to Teen Years To Young Adult

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