Mary McLeod Bethune was the fifteenth of seventeenth children, was born in Maysville, South Carolina, on July 10th, 1875. Patsy McIntosh and Samuel McLeod,were slaves who had been emancipated after the Civil War. They were also South Carolina sharecroppers, but they wanted their first child born in freedom to get an education. At the age of 10 she began to working the fields, she spent eight to ten hours a day picking cotton. Mary didn't have …showed first 75 words of 1011 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1011 total…an organizer and a political activist. She made many contributions to the African American Society. Mary McLeod Bethune died at the age of eighty on the 18th May, 1955, at Daytona Beach, Florida. She was buried on the campus of her school. She left behind a son, a grandson and six great-grandchildren. Thirty years later, she was honored with a postage stamp in her name. A Los Angeles middle school is also named in her memory.