Educator, Civil Rights Figure. She is considered by many to be the most influential African-American woman in United States history. For this achievement, Dr. Mary Bethune was honored as a Florida educator and civil rights leader with a statue, which was unveiled in the National Statuary Hall inside the United States Capitol on July 13, 2022. With two statues donated by each state in the United States, the State of Florida replaced the statue of a Confederate army officer with Bethune's statue. She is the first African American to represent any state. It was she who helped to initiate the Black Pride movement in America. The fifteenth child of seventeen children of former enslaved parents, she was born in Mayesville, South Carolina, on July 10, 1875. Her determination and drive were evident from an early age. Through her parents' help and encouragement, Bethune acquired a good education. She attended the local Trinity Presbyterian Mission School, Scotia Seminary, which became Barber-Scotia College in Concord, North Carolina. Furthermore, in preparation to become an African missionary, the Bible Institute for Home and Foreign Missions, which was later Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois. After graduating from the Institute in 1895, McLeod was extremely disappointed to learn that the Presbyterian Mission Board would not assign an African American to Africa. At that point, she turned to education, teaching at a number of schools, and soon coming to realize the education of Black students was the most important factor in improving the lives of African Americans. In 1898, she married Albertus Bethune who died in 1918; they had one child. Bethune wanted to provide even more opportunities for African American girls, and, in 1904, founded the Daytona Educational and Industrial Training School, which became Bethune-Cookman College in Florida, with little more than her faith in God, five young pupils, and $1.50. After a rocky start and her persistent direction as President from 1904 to 1942, the school became a success and expanded to a 32-acre campus with 14 buildings and 400 students. Bethune also played an important role in the fight for African American suffrage. After the 19th Amendment passed in 1920, she provided money to pay the poll tax, taught a hundred potential African American voters to read, and defied the Ku Klux Klan by leading them to the polls to vote. Over the next two decades, Bethune's efforts to build her school brought her to national attention. She was in demand as a speaker and began to play a greater role in the public sector. She served on numerous organizations, including as president of the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools, the Interracial Council of America, and the National Council of Negro Women, which she founded in 1935 in New York City and served as President for fourteen years. Bethune also advised a number of United States Presidents and, as Director of the Division of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration from 1936 to 1944, became the first African American woman to head a federal agency. She was the sole woman among President Franklin D. Roosevelt's African-American advisors, a group referred to as the "Black Cabinet." Bethune was also one of three African American consultants to the U.S. delegation involved in developing the United Nations charter. Throughout her life, Bethune received numerous awards, including the NAACP's prestigious Spingarn Medal in 1935, the Frances Drexel Award for Distinguished Service in 1937, and the Thomas Jefferson Award for Leadership in 1942. Throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, Bethune continued to advise Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower on matters affecting race relations. In her later years Bethune established the Mary Mcleod Bethune Foundation and promoted Frank Buchman's Moral Re-Armament, and international movement to unite people behind a set of absolute values. She also traveled widely and received recognition in other countries. In 1949, Haiti presented Bethune with its Medal of Honor and Merit, and, in 1952, Liberia gave her its Star of Africa award. Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune died at her home in Daytona Beach, Florida, on May 18, 1955, having become the nation's preeminent symbol of Black dignity and achievement. Bethune was laid to rest in a simple gravesite behind her home at Bethune-Cookman College so that friends and colleagues who visited the campus could visit her as well. Thirty years later in 1985, Bethune was recognized as one of the most influential African American women in the country with a postage stamp issued in her honor. She is the first woman and first African American to be honored with a statue in a public park in Washington, D.C.