Mary McLeod Bethune, known as the ‘First Lady of Negro America,’ also sought to unify the African diaspora

Educator Mary McLeod Bethune regularly wrote of her travels abroad. Robert Abbott Sengstacke via Getty Images by Robertson Preston, Howard University When I first landed an internship as an archives technician at the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House-National Historic Site – the D.C. home of the woman who founded Bethune-Cookman University – I didn’t see a strong connection between the college founder’s life and the rest of the African diaspora. Many of the requests I got from researchers were for records of Bethune’s work within what is known as FDR’s “Black Cabinet,” an unofficial Black advisory group that helped raise awareness of issues affecting Black America. Or her role as the founder of the National Council of Negro Women. Or her overall involvement in Washington, D.C., as a resident of Logan Circle, where she welcomed people from around the world to the NCNW headquarters. But in the process of preserving the records and retrieving them for scholars, I soon came to see Bethune in a different light. By reading her letters, diary entries and notes from various meetings, I noticed that Bethune was awarded honors in Haiti and Liberia. I decided to take a closer look at her work abroad...