Unofficial Women Educators, Post Reconstruction: Mary McLeod Bethune

This article demonstrates Afro-American women’s pivotal role in promoting transnationalism in the world of politics. It invites us to follow them on their journey to international congresses from the mid-19th century to the founding of the United Nations. By looking at some personal trajectories of some Afro-American international activists, like Mary Church Terrell, Mary McLeod Bethune and Amy Jacques Garvey, and analyzing some of their speeches, we will try to demonstrate to what extent these women gave legitimacy to the unheard claims of colored people and as such paved the way to modern diplomacy.

This article focuses on the particular moment of the 1945 United Nations charter meeting as a catalyst for a shift in Mary McLeod Bethune's feminist thought. The meeting, where Bethune served as the only African American female delegate, signalled a change in Bethune's thinking about equality for black women, so she used the founding of the United Nations as a platform to promote black women's alliances with other women of colour. Her idea was to reframe black women as citizens of the world, thus putting them in a numerical and ideological majority rather than keeping them in a minority position. Bethune has often been viewed as a reformer of race and gender issues in the early twentieth century, but a focus on her activism has hidden the intellectual contributions that she made to a form of black feminism that emerged out of her work with other clubwomen and through the United Nations in the 1920s through the 1950s. Specifically, this article argues that Bethune's intellectual work created a framework for African American women's feminism that emphasised anti‐colonialism and their global alliance with other women of colour throughout the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Newsome, C. G. (1992). Mary McLeod Bethune and the Methodist Episcopal Church North: in but out. The Journal of Religious Thought, 49(1), 7–20.

"This classified bibliography includes most scholarly articles in the field of southern history published in periodicals in 2022, except for descriptive or genealogical writings of primary interest to a restricted group of readers. If an article was published in a year other than 2022, the appropriate year is marked with a bracketed notation. Entries under each heading are arranged alphabetically by author." -- From Bibliography