From National Education Association:
Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955)
Born during Reconstruction to parents who had been enslaved, Mary McLeod Bethune grew up walking five miles to a Presbyterian mission school where a teacher noticed her dedication and recommended her for a college scholarship—setting Bethune on a path to change her career and the world. In 1904, with $1.50 and five young students, the now-legendary Mary McLeod Bethune started a school for Black girls in Florida that became today’s Bethune-Cookman University. Two decades later, Bethune was elected as the first woman president of the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools (NATCS), later renamed the American Teachers Association (ATA), which would eventually merge with the National Education Association to become the union we know today.
More here. (Note: In honor of Black History Month, at least one post will be devoted to its 2025 theme of “African Americans and Labor” throughout the month of February)
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