WHAT DOES AMERICAN DEMOCRACY MEAN TO ME1?

The document is the transcript of a speech developed by the educator and activist Mary
McLeod Bethune on a national radio broadcast on November 23rd, 1939.
America's Town Meeting of the Air was a public affairs discussion broadcast on radio
from May 30th, 1935, to July 1st, 19562. The show tried to mirror the old town
meetings. It aimed to create a new kind of educational program, one that would be
entertaining as well as mentally challenging, while exposing listeners to various
perspectives on the issues of the day3.
Mary Jane McLeod was born in 1875. Her parents had been slaves. She was the
fifteenth of seventeen siblings. All her family was illiterate but she decided to study
having been inspired, when a white girl told her to leave a book because she couldn't
read. When she was seven, she had to walk 5 miles to school, at 12 she won a
scholarship in the Scotia Seminary; a school for the best and the brightest students.
When she was 19 she won another scholarship to the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago,
Illinois. She was the only black person among 1000 students4. Mary returned home after
graduation and started teaching in her old school, but she wanted to start her own one
and achieved this on October 4, 1904; she was 29.
In addition to this educative labor, Mary McLeod was a defender of civil rights and was
intensely committed to racial advancement throughout her life5. She lead numerous
local, regional, and national women's clubs such as the Nation Council of Negro
Women, which she founded in 1935. She was a gifted organizer, so, she was recognized
as an expert for many presidents, both Republicans and Democrats. She was an active member
of the National Commission for Child Welfare under Presidents Coolidge and Hoover. In 1927,
Mary McLeod met Eleanor Roosevelt at a luncheon for the presidents of women's organizations
held under the auspices of the National Council of Women of the United States. This meeting
marked the beginning of a friendship and an important alliance between McLeod and Roosevelt.
McLeod's relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt greatly enhanced McLeod's status and gave her
greater access to political leaders more than other black advisers in the Roosevelt
administration. Lastly, in 1945, President Harry Truman named Bethune to his Civil Rights
Commission and as the only African American woman consultant to the San Francisco

Conference to draw up the charter for the United Nations6.

Mary McLeod had a charismatic personality and gained the interest of both black and
white people too. She had the gift of eloquence, with a "melodious and cultivated
speaking voice, an imposing physical short-appearance, stout, dark-skinned,
affectionate smile, and piercing but friendly eyes7." Moreover, her image was nonconfrontational to many white people and it provided her a favorable coverage in the
white press. Meanwhile, to her own people, she had the image of a caring mother and
attracted wide coverage in black press committed to ending racial segregation. She was,
then, a recognizable figure on both sides of the racial conflict.
1

By the time Mary McLeod delivered this speech, she was already a valuable personality
in education and civil rights. In the 30s, the president Hoover invited Mrs. Bethune to
two important conferences: the White House Conference on Child Health and
Protection and the Presidents Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership.
But, at the same time, Bethune's achievements occurred during the rule of the local and
national so-called "Jim Crow" laws of strict racial segregation, especially in the South
of the United States. McLeod died one year before these laws were completely
overturned.
The speech was given in November 1939. The Second World War had already started in
September in Europe but the USA didn't take part the conflict until two years later, in
December 1941. During the Second World War, McLeod was administrator of the
Office of the Minority Affairs of the Nation Youth Administration 8 which was a New
Deals agency focused on providing work and education for Americans, and was a
special assistant to the Secretary of War to help select the Negro WAC (Women's Army
Corps) office candidates9.
We must bear in mind that the United States Armed Forces were officially segregated
until 1948. WWII was the basis for post-war integration of the military. In 1941 fewer
than 4,000 African Americans were serving in the military and only twelve African
Americans had become officers. By 1945, more than 1.2 million African Americans
would be serving in uniform on the Home Front, in Europe, and the Pacific (including
thousands of African American women in the Womens auxiliaries)10.
As I said, Bethune's achievements occurred during the era of strict racial segregation in
many places throughout the country. In this environment, newspapers were a principal
forum for public discourse. The newspapers owned by black people spread the message
of the civil rights fight, and Bethune took advantage of that forum in an effort to present
herself as a remarkable leader of black hope, to lead black progress, and to move out the
stereotypes and the negative perceptions of black women and men in the American
mind.
She was very conscious of the power of the mass media and used the press widely,
either black or white press. Bethune lived in Washington, D.C.-a major news market,
from 1936-1942, expanding her ties in both the white and black press, while continuing
to travel throughout the nation in her capacity as a fund-raiser for her college and
director of the Negro division of NYA, and founding president of the NCNW. In 1937
she began the first of two columns for national black newspapers. She wrote for the
Pittsburgh Courier for two years, 1937-1939, and from 1948 until her death in 1955, her
byline appeared in the Chicago Defender.11 She preferred using honey rather than
vinegar to make change, which reflects a pragmatic idealism grounded in a belief in the
inevitable triumph of America's democratic ideals 12. Her rhetoric of self-help,
patriotism, religious faith, and motivation for change found an available platform within
both the mainstream white press and the vindicationist black press.13
2

Her purpose, as she says in the first sentence of the speech, is to be the voice of black
Americans. Her aim is probably achieved as she is consistently listed among the most
important black leaders in American history, along with Frederick Douglass, Booker T.
Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Martin Luther King, Jr. During her lifetime she was
called the female Booker T. Washington, and enjoyed widespread popular support
among the black masses, many of whom dubbed her "Mother Bethune" 14. Later, she
greatly influenced other civil rights activists and historians15, like, for instance, Paula
Giddings, another African American woman who also suffered discrimination in her
youth. Giddings denounces that nowadays the focus of inequality has been placed on
personal responsibility and does not demand change from the broader society. Giddings
struggles as well to achieve economical rights for black people in order to get away
from poverty by joining as a people and fighting collectively against stereotypes which
characterize black people as amoral and vicious. She, in the same line as McLeod, asks
for equal opportunities to achieve either personal or communal success 16 and proves that
the protection of civil rights avoids poverty and asserts equality, like the Civil Rights
Act did in 1964, which reduced poverty rates from 17.3% to 12.3% in ten years.
The main target of McLeod when she delivered her speech was to convince the
audience that America will only achieve real democracy by means of inclusive and
equalitarian politics and it will only happen if all Americans, whether white or black
fight together.
Democracy is still an ideal; it is not yet achieved in America and is only possible in a
country where all the people are included, no matter their race nor gender. American
people can only achieve this target altogether and side-by-side.
McLeod links the idea of democracy with the roots of American morality, such as
Christianity, freedom and the equal opportunities. Democracy is the environment in
which black Americans, formerly slaves, were achieving not only freedom, but they
were, as she says in the speech, in the way to equality trough the education, the
ownership and the participation in government. She vindicates the contribution of the
black American people to the growth and the wealth of the country and assures that the
greater opportunities for the black people, the more benefits the country will achieve.
Finally, she denounces that there are many places in America where democracy and
equal opportunity are far away from black people There are set aside from education or
unions, and even worse conditions such as living in fear of the lynch mob.
Mary McLeod had innate gifts in music and public speaking. She refined these abilities
through large education, especially enunciation and pronunciation, which surprised
many people trained in the so-called "belle letters17." In this speech, McLeod uses her
orator skills and uses accurate but carefully chosen words, linking her thoughts with
some well known American ideals18. For instance, she talks about the democracy based
on "Christianity, in which we confidently entrust our destiny as a people." She uses the
metaphors profusely, for example in the sentences "we are rising out y of the darkness
3

of slavery into the light of freedom" or "These are only the first fruit of a rich harvest,
which will be reaped when next and wider fields are opened to us."
I think McLeod is a very smart orator for she uses the sandwich technique, one
psychological tool very used in management coaching, which consists in building a
message by inserting a critical message between two positive ones. She speaks firstly of
the democratic ideals and the positive contributions that black people had been making
for the growth of America; later on, she talks about the problems that still have black
people precisely because the democracy is unequally applied throughout the country;
and finally, she asks for the fight of all the American people for a united nation in the
aim of building a strong and perfect democracy. I think that McLeod shows her
conciliatory style with this technique.
I consider, this speech is very interesting for an historian learner because it reflects very
well not only a convulsing era but the fight and the empowerment of the black
American people, in this case, especially, the fight on the empowerment of a black
American woman.
From my point of view it is a very truthful source because of the position of the author
who is, at the same time, a privileged witness of the struggle of their people in the fields
of education and civil rights and one important part of the Black Cabinet of the
American governments during a large period.
In conclusion, I consider this speech very interesting because Mary McLeod is a symbol
of the American ideal of the success through personal own effort. She had, possibly, the
worse conditions to achieve the success, for she was black, she was a woman and, in
addition, she was the daughter of illiterate former slaves; nevertheless, by means of the
education, she became a notorious woman, discussing side-by-side with various
American presidents.
I think this speech becomes especially interesting when we see it in a wider historical
context. On the one hand, the situation of the black American people is still very
unequal in many places. On the other hand, in November 1939 the Second World War
has already started in Europe, but not in America. Nevertheless, the threat of the war is
present and, at this moment, the defense of the country could be very important and
could imply all the population.

http://soundlearning.publicradio.org/subjects/history_civics/say_it_plain/mary_mcleod_bethune.sht
ml
2

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s/Radio/TownMeeting/TownMeeting.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Town_Meeting_of_the_Air

Pinkney, A. D. (2008, Feb). MARY MCLEOD BETHUNE: A Teacher from the Start. Storyworks, 15,
30-31,T8. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/213426507?accountid=14609
5

Hanson, J. A. (2003, Mar). Mary McLeod Bethune: Race Woman. The New Crisis, 110, 34-37.
Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/199672090?accountid=14609
6

Ibid. Hanson, J. A.

McCluskey, A. T. (1999). Representing the Race: Mary McLeod Bethune and the Press in the Jim
Crow era. Western Journal of Black Studies, 23(4), 236-245. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/200340056?accountid=14609
8

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Youth_Administration

Perry, T. D. (1984). Remembering Mary McLeod Bethune. Negro History Bulletin, 47(4), 17.
Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1296783634?accountid=14609
10

http://www.nationalww2museum.org/assets/pdfs/african-americans-in-world.pdf

11

Ibid. McCluskey, A. T.

12

Perkins, C. O. (1988). The Pragmatic Idealism of Mary McLeod Bethune. Sage, 5(2), 30. Retrieved
from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1300126100?accountid=14609
13

Ibid. McCluskey, A. T.

14

Ibid. McCluskey, A. T.

15

Collison, M. N. -. (1999). Race Women Stepping Forward: Anna Julia Cooper, Mary McLeod
Bethune, Pauli Murray, Marilyn Mobley McKenzie, Paula Giddings. Black Issues in Higher Education,
16(7), 24. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/194182959?accountid=14609
16

Giddings, P. (1996, 09). Where do we go from here? Essence, 27, 80. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/223149084?accountid=14609
17

Brewer, W. M. (1955). MARY MCLEOD BETHUNE. Negro History Bulletin, 19(2), 48. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/1296757844?accountid=14609
18

Ibid. McCluskey, A. T.