Mary McLeod Bethune was born on July 10, 1875, in South Carolina. After graduating from Scotia Seminary (now Barber-Scotia College) in 1893 and from the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago in 1895, she taught in a succession of small Southern schools until 1904 when with virtually no tangible assets she set up a school of her own: The Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls. In 1923, the school merged with the Cookman Institute for Men to form what was known from 1929 as Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach. Bethune remained President of the college until 1942 and again from 1946 to 1947. Her efforts on behalf of education brought her to national prominence. In 1935 she founded the National Council of Negro Women where she remained President until 1949, she was also Vice President of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 1940 to 1955.         Mary McLeod Bethune