9781422277812

C H A P T E R 1 TARGET OF THE KLAN A s Mary Mcleod Bethune rode her bicycle through the resort town of Daytona Beach, Florida, late in the summer of 1920, she hardly acted like someone who had recently become the target of death threats. A hefty, resolute woman of 45, she cheerfully greeted the area’s black residents as she pedaled fromhouse to house, urging the local women to exercise their newly won right to vote. And they in turn greeted the founder of the community’s first school for blacks, which she had established 16 years earlier. Bethune had started the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls (which later became Bethune-Cookman College) with $1.50 in cash, five pupils, and a few packing cases that served as desks. She had raised additional money for the school by baking pies and selling ice cream to railroad construction workers. As the school began to grow, she solicited funds from leading philanthropists, industrialists, and black organizations. Her shrewd business skills and help from both the local black community and the area’s wealthy white residents enabled the school to expand rapidly from a small cottage to a trim, well-kept campus housing Daytona Beach’s first black hospital. Bethune also took an interest in other educational matters, including a proposed bill on the general ballot in 1920 that provided for the first public high school for

CH A P T E R 1 : TA R G E T O F T H E K L A N

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