A Dramatic Performance: The Unlikely Friendship of Mary McLeod Bethune & Eleanor Roosevelt

About The Event

You are cordially invited to join us on November 8 at 3:00pm for a special performance of a two-person play that explores the unique friendship between Mary McLeod Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt. The event will take place at the Community Church of Chesterland. The play features talented Women in History actors, Ruth Pangrace as Eleanor Roosevelt and Jeannine Gaskin as Mary McLeod Bethune. We hope to see you there!

RSVP to racialequitybuddies@fhcpresb.org to reserve a seat.

The story of Mary McLeod Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt demonstrates the power of friendship, faith, and determination. Now it’s our turn to carry that spirit forward. Join us, and bring a friend or neighbor as we honor their legacy together.

Their backgrounds were drastically different, which makes their friendship all the more interesting and remarkable. Mary McCleod Bethune was born in 1875 in Maysville, South Carolina, the 15th of 17 children to formerly enslaved parents; while Eleanor Roosevelt was born in 1884 in NYC into American aristocracy, the niece of former president Theodore Roosevelt. Yet, their paths crossed in 1927, and an unlikely friendship ensued.

Mary McLeod Bethune, an accomplished life:

• 1904: Founded Daytona Educational and Industrial School for Negro girls
• 1911: Established the first hospital in the Dayton region for African Americans. It worked in tandem with the McLeod Training School for Nurses and offered a sanctuary for Black nursing students and the sick in the racially segregated town.
• 1923: Her institute merged and was renamed Bethune-Cookman College, a four-year co-ed school.
• 1924: Elected President of the National Association of Colored Women
• 1927: Met Eleanor Roosevelt
• 1929: Onward advised Presidents Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt and Truman.
• 1935: Founded National Council of Negro Women & Aframerica Women’s Journal
• 1936-43: First African American to head a federal agency, the National Youth Administration under FDR
• 1945: Co-founded the United Negro College Fund
• 1945: She was the only woman of color at the conference to draft the United Nations’ charter in San Francisco, California.
• 1974: The Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial in Lincoln Park was the first memorial to honor an African American built on public land in Washington, D.C., and it was the first portrait statue of an American woman on a public site in the city.