Mary McLeod Bethune

Lesson Plans

Mary McLeod Bethune, Educator
Teacher's Guide for the Interview with Mary McLeod Bethune

Background Information

This letter is an artifact from the age of Jim Crow; an era of legal segregation characterized by violence and discrimination against African-Americans. The author of the letter, Florence Lovell Roane, was a Professor of English at Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona.

Her son Lovell was accepted to a college preparatory school in Niagara Falls, New York, based on glowing recommendations from his pastor, physician, and school principals. When he arrived, he was denied admittance on account of his race.

The headmaster of the school explained to his mother: "I forgot to ask for a picture because I was so sure that Lovell was a white boy."

Professor Roane goes on to describe her son's trip. "At Niagara Falls he saw the soft bed in the room set aside for him. He ate at the table they had planned for him. He tried on the cadet uniforms they had planned for him to wear. He looked at me in Fessenden and said, 'Oh Mother, you should have seen those lovely beds at DeVeaux; I just wanted to sleep there one night.'"

Roane wrote this letter to Daniel M. Williams to convey her disappointment. At the time, Williams was at work on a biography of educator and civil rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune.

Roane told Williams that her son Ernest Lovell Dyett was upset after being turned away from Deveaux College. She explained that her son would attend Fessenden, an African-American preparatory school near Ocala, Florida. Lovell later graduated from Bethune-Cookman College and Harvard University. He went on to have a distinguished career at Howard University and in broadcasting.

Roane came to Daytona in 1934. She held a Ph.D. in education from Boston University. Because of staff shortages alluded to in the letter, Roane was serving as Bethune's secretary in addition to her teaching duties. She retired from Bethune-Cookman in 1979.

Until the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Topeka, Kansas Board of Education (1954), most educational facilities, both north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line, clung firmly to racial segregation. This was especially evident in primary and secondary schools.

Letter from Bethune-Cookman College
Letter on Education and Jim Crow
Use to Illustrate:
  • Discrimination in education.
  • African-American access to education during the Jim Crow era.
  • Barriers to equality in education.
Document Analysis Worksheets
Created by the National Archives

Document analysis is the first step in working with primary sources. Teach your students to think through primary source documents for contextual understanding and to extract information to make informed judgments. The document analysis worksheets created by the National Archives and Records Administration are in the public domain.

Next Generation Sunshine State Standards
  • SS.4.A.1.1: Analyze primary and secondary resources to identify significant individuals and events throughout Florida history.
  • SS.912.A.7.7: Assess the building of coalitions between African-Americans, whites, and other groups in achieving integration and equal rights.
Florida Standards
  • LAFS.4.RI.1.1: Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
  • LAFS.68.RH.1.1: Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources.
  • LAFS.68.RH.1.2: Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or opinions.
  • LAFS.910.RH.1.1: Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, attending to such features as the date and origin of the information.
  • LAFS.910.RH.1.2: Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of how key events or ideas develop over the course of the text.
  • LAFS.1112.RH.1.1: Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an understanding of the text as a whole.
  • LAFS.1112.RH.1.2: Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear the relationships among the key details and ideas.
  • LAFS.1112.RH.2.5: Analyze in detail how a complex primary source is structured, including how key sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text contribute to the whole.

Features