Book Review

Joyce A. Hanson. Mary McLeod Bethune & Black Women’s Political Activism.Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003. 248 pp. Cloth $32.50.

The racialized and gendered construction of politicshasoften marginalizedblack women’s political activism and leadership in society. A traditional andconventionally ‘‘white male-centered’’ approach in defining politics,leadership, and activism has caused black women’s activism to be largelynegated by historians and scholars, affecting the historical legacy ofwomen’s contributions to the American political landscape (p. 3).In Mary McLeod Bethune & Black Women’s Political Activism, Joyce A.Hanson challenges the traditional definition of political activism andfocuses on the life and work of Mary McLeod Bethune.

Discussions on the life of Bethune have been the subject ofnumerous scholarly articles, books, and anthologies. Most of thesetexts cite Bethune as an influential black activist and an outstandingeducator. Still, most of this scholarship has focused primarily on aspectsof her life and career, namely the founding of the Daytona Institute,which later merged with Cookman Institute to become Bethune-Cookman College, or her work in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Dealas the director of the Office of Minority Affairs in the National YouthAdministration. Hanson’s work builds on this scholarship by combiningall aspects of Bethune’s life and examining them within a context of blackwomen’s political activism.

Using primary sources, including many of Bethune’s own writings,Hanson reinterprets Bethune’s political accomplishments by examiningthe means, techniques, and actions she employed in pursuing equalityand the time period that influenced Bethune. Hanson notes, ‘‘Whenexamined individually, the choices she made throughout her lifetimeoften appear contradictory, unless we understand that Bethune had onefoot in the nineteenth century and one in the twentieth century. She wasa transitional figure’’ (p. 3). By framing her life in this manner, Hansonorganizes the book into five parts. In chapter 1, entitled ‘‘The Making ofa Race Woman,’’ she outlines the impact of Bethune’s family life, hersocialization into community activism, and her early lesson on the ‘‘ethicof socially responsible individualism,’’ or the notion of educated youngwomen having a unique responsibility to develop a better society andadvance the race through their education. These influences had aprofound impact on Bethune.

In addition, Hanson cites the stories and teaching of Bethune’smother Patsy McLeod and her grandmother Sophia as well as otherblack women and men in her hometown of Mayvesville, South Carolina,in the post-Reconstruction Era as influencing Bethune’s view of racerelations and later her career. Hanson also examines personal accounts

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from Bethune’s unpublished autobiography and notes how Bethune’splace as one of the first freeborn children in her family, day-to-dayexperiences, and the prominent gender ideology of the nineteenthcenturyFthe ‘‘Cult of True Womanhood’’Fall shaped how Bethunedecided to conduct herself in various spaces of her life and resolvedBethune to work for racial equality and to make black women’s voicesheard.

In chapter 2 Hanson discusses Bethune’s educational philosophywithin the context of the prominent debates of the time; industrialeducation, with Booker T. Washington as a proponent, versus liberaleducation, with W.E.B. DuBois as a proponent. Hanson discusses theimpact of these two philosophies in shaping the educationalopportunities for African Americans in the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries. She notes that while scholars often create adichotomous view of the philosophies of Booker T. Washington andW.E.B. DuBois, both figures were concerned with the progress ofAfrican Americans. Hanson discusses how Bethune successfullymerged both philosophies and called for a development of a variety ofeducational programs for African Americans, holding black educatorsresponsible for identifying gifted students and giving them everyopportunity for higher education and the development of students’individual talents. Thus, she created and founded the DaytonaEducational and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls with the samephilosophy.

Hanson also discusses Bethune’s challenges in procuring adequatefunding for the Daytona Institute. Bethune’s belief in providing highschool level education along with industrial training for AfricanAmerican students often did little to sway white philanthropists.Hanson notes of Bethune, ‘‘She firmly believed that educationaldecisions that affected the lives of black children belonged in thehands of black parents, educators, administrators and professionals.Donating money or materials did not give white philanthropists theright to make life-altering decisions for black children’’ (p. 69). Whileshe strongly advocated for black education to be a community concern,Bethune recognized the importance of monetary support from whitephilanthropists. Hanson carefully discusses Bethune’s delicate balancingact between funding the Daytona Institute and fostering black agencywithin education. Hanson notes this double-edged sword causedBethune to employ a two-pronged approach for the survival of theDaytona Institute: diplomatic passiveness, or the acceptance ofcondescending and objectionable behavior and attitudes from whitephilanthropists, and effective confrontation or flat-out intolerance ofracist and sexist ideology as seen in the curriculum at Daytona and attimes in Bethune’s meetings with white philanthropists.

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In chapter 3 Hanson profiles Bethune’s growth as a public figure,particularly within the black women’s club movement. Hanson explainsthat while black women had for generations come together in local andregional associations to express concerns and confront issues affectingAfrican Americans, the rise of the black women’s club movement duringthe early twentieth century was a transformative platform for blackwomen’s activism on a national scale. As legal and customary segregationin the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries became morewidespread, black women increasingly saw the importance ofestablishing a national organization to systematically address socialsegregation, economic inequality, and political disfranchisement. Thecreation of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in1896 was monumental in transforming black women’s political activism.It was the first nationalized effort exclusively created and controlled byblack women, and it gave black women’s racial and community work anational infrastructure (p. 99).

Bethune served as president of various local, regional, and nationalwomen’s organizations. In her roles within each of these organizations,she consistently called for black women to harness ‘‘the great power ofwomen in a force for constructive action’’ (p. 8). Hanson highlightsBethune’s greatest contribution to the club movement in her role as thepresident NACW. While the NACW was a monumental organizationconcerned with empowerment of black women and with the economic,social, and physical advancement of African Americans, Hanson notesthat the organization was largely conservative in their thoughts onwomen’s domestic roles, and the organization suffered from classelitism. Hanson discusses that while Bethune was a part of the middleclass, her family background and upbringing separated her from beingseen as a part of the socially elite. In addition her views on the roles ofblack women were quite different from those expressed by manyNACW members.

In 1924 Bethune was elected president of the NACW over Ida B.Wells-Barnett. The NACW elected Bethune because they thought shewas less confrontational than Wells-Barnett; however, Hanson notesthat Bethune’s vision for the NACW was very different from past leadersand the majority of its members. She notes that Bethune was clear thatthe problems that affected black women and black people in generalwere not confined to one region or one particular class. Her role aspresident gave her an opportunity to transform the NACW to become amore inclusive organization concerned with multiple levels ofdiscrimination, and it pushed her further away from a gradualistapproach to race relations.

Chapter 4 discusses Bethune’s development as a formal politicalleader in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal administration. Hanson

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argues that Bethune’s use of dual dialogue helped to effect change forAfrican Americans within the federal government. Publicly, Bethune didnot condemn Roosevelt or New Deal programs. Rather, she worked toquietly alter programs and empower African Americans by taking awayformal control of state-level programs from white administrators andhaving qualified African Americans appointed to key decision-makingpositions. Hanson notes that Bethune built an independent black fieldstaff that was free to report on the discriminatory practices of whiteadministrators while simultaneously helping to positively affectgovernment policy and practices and social inequality.

In chapter 5 Hanson considers the creation of the National Councilof Negro Women (NCNW). Hanson argues that this most clearlyreflects Bethune’s transitional place in African-American women’shistory. Bethune’s organization of the NCNW cultivated a femaleculture of resistance and fostered female autonomy. Designed to linklocal and regional organizations in the struggle for representation in thenational political process, the NCNW worked to make black womenastute political activists and lobbyists; to build women’s politicalstrength by gaining appointments to policy-making boards andcommittees; and to eliminate discriminatory legislation in housing,health, employment, public accommodations, and politicalrepresentation (p. 9). While not all African-American women activistsshared in Bethune’s vision, she succeeded in aligning twenty-twowomen’s organizations with the council and helped to institutionalizeblack women’s political gains.

As noted by historian Darlene Clark Hine, black women’s historyproceeds along two interconnected fronts. On one path, researchers arestill uncovering and reclaiming the specifics of black women’sexperiences. On the second path, researchers are concerned withformulating the right questions and raising the important theoreticalissues that will bear directly on the development of future research.1

Hanson engages both biography and theory in a discussion around thepower structures that affect black women’s political activism and theirpoliticization within the context of Bethune’s life. Her telling ofBethune’s life stretches beyond a contributionist study and rathermoves toward an innovative analysis of Bethune’s work as a politician.Hanson’s redefinition of the word politics and politician from‘‘spokesman,’’ electioneering, and office holding to those that ‘‘changetheir ideas about the causes of their powerlessness, when they recognizethe systematic forces that oppress them and act to change the conditions

1Darlene Clark Hine, ed., Black Women in United States History, vol. 1. (Brooklyn:Carlson Publishing, 1990).

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of their lives’’2 allows for Bethune’s life to be examined beyond hertraditional role as an educator and to be placed within the historicalcontext as a politician.

In addition, Hanson’s careful use of primary and secondary sourcesto discuss Bethune’s socialization, the curriculum and practices at theDaytona Institute, and the organization of the NCNW have directimpact on possible studies in the fields of feminist pedagogy, philosophyof education, history of education, political science, or any disciplineinterested in how Bethune’s life and work inform understandings aboutrace, class, and gender during this time period. Hanson’s study continuesto uncover more information about Bethune’s life and ideology and mostimportantly helps to dispel the silence and correct the imbalance inpolitical and educational history.

CHAMARA J. KWAKYEUNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

2Bernice McNair Barnett, ‘‘Black Women’s Collectivist Movement Organizations:Their Struggles During the ‘‘Doldrums,’’ in Feminist Organizations: Harvest of the NewWomen’s Movement, ed. Myra Marx Ferree and Patricia Yancey Martin (Philadelphia:Temple University Press, 1995), pp. 199–222.

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