Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial

Lincoln Park, Washington DC

Photo credit: Russell Smith

Location:

Depicted as a standing elderly woman, the famed educator and civil rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune, stands holding in her right hand a walking stick presented to her by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She presents   in her outstretched left hand  a scroll, evocative of her accumulated wisdom, to two children — a smaller girl and a larger boy figure. The boy leans forward Bethune with outstretched arms, the girl leans back her arms to her side as if she is skipping rope.  

The front of the base reads Mary McLeod Bethune, 1875-1955, Let her works praise her.

Around the sides of the base are inscribed various sayings of Ms. Bethune: “I Leave You Love I Leave You Hope I Leave You the Challenge of Developing Confidence in One Another I Leave You a Thirst for Education I Leave You A Respect for the Use of Power I Leave You Faith I Leave You Racial Dignity , I Leave You also a Desire to Live Harmoniously with Your Fellow Man, I Leave You Finally a Responsibility to Our Young People”.

Eastern edge of Lincoln Park, near the playgrounds, close to 13th street NE. Lincoln Park is located in between 11th and 13th streets, NE, and East Capitol Street NE and East Capital Street SE. Street parking is usually available in the neighborhood. The Park is located along the 96 Bus Route, is about a 30 minute walk from the Union Station Red Line Metro station, and about a 22 minute walk from the Capitol South Orange and Blue Line Metro station.

Historical Background

Mary McLeod Bethune was a prominent educator, political activist and civil rights leader.  She was raised in a log cabin in Sumter County, South Carolina, the fifteenth of seventeen children, by parents who had been born enslaved, and was deeply influenced by her maternal grandmother’s stories of resistance during the slavery era. She determinedly pursued education, including at what is now the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. She pursued a career in teaching and educational administration, strongly dedicated to opening up educational opportunities of Black girls and young women. After serving in the presidential campaign of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, she assisted in the creation of the Federal Council on Colored Affairs, informally known as The Black Cabinet. In 1935, she formed the umbrella organization, The National Council of Negro Women. She was employed within the National Youth Administration, a New Deal agency, and, among other accomplishments, secured funding for Black Colleges to train military pilots for the war effort. She was an effective public defender of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, and co- founded the United Negro College Fund. During her career, she served as advisor to five US Presidents. Ebony magazine in 1949 termed her “The First Lady of Negro America”.

The monument was conceived of and funded by the National Council of Negro Women, an organization Ms. Bethune founded. The bronze sculpture was created by the prominent sculptor Robert Berks, whose well known works in Washington DC also include the Albert Einstein statue in front of the National Academy of Sciences and the John F. Kennedy bust in the foyer of The Kennedy Center. The memorial was unveiled on July 10, 1974, which would have been Ms Bethune’s 99th birthday, in front of a crowd of 18,000 people.

The monument was the first to honor an African American on public land in DC. Lincoln Park is administered collaboratively between the US National Park Service and the non profit Friends of Lincoln Park.

Interpretive Notes

The sculpture faces the Emancipation Memorial, depicting Abraham Lincoln and a newly liberated enslaved man. (The Emancipation Memorial in 1974 was rotated 180 degrees so that Lincoln would directly face Bethune.) The Bethune assemblage both echoes and transforms the Emancipation composition. Like Lincoln, Bethune has her arms extended; the martyred president touches a document that represents the Emancipation Proclamation, while Bethune holds a scroll evoking her gift of wisdom. While Lincoln holds his right arm in an act of blessing the nearly naked enslaved prostrate man, Bethune holds out her arm towards two Black children, who are standing and fully clothed. Lincoln and the Slave are deeply serious, while Bethune and the children seem to have a playful, joyous air about them. (Bethune often remarked she carried her cane not for physical support but “for swagger,”)

Prompts for Close Looking

• Robert Berks is often termed an “impressionist sculptor,” whose works strive to emulate how the eyes sees, to establish powerful effects at a distance, rather than the finished smoothness of classic academic sculpture. How does Berks’ signature style, in which clay is in effect pinched to leave traces of the artist’s hand, convey a sense of Bethune’s powerful, effusive personality?

  
  

• What strikes you about the composition of the assemblage, including the positioning of the three figures? Why has the artist chosen not to represent Bethune standing on her own, but rather in relationship to two children?  What kind of energy is evoked by the circle or triangle formed by the three figures?

  
  

• Bethune famously remarked that she used her cane, a gift from FDR, “for swagger.” How does the artist use her cane to help create a sense of Bethune, making her in effect a living presence in the park?

  
  

• In what respects does this work illustrate the phrase inscribed on the base, “Let her works praise her”? What is implied by the presence  and positioning of the young Black boy and the young Black girl. at the onset of their life journeys?

  
  

•  In what respects does the artist seem to be mindful of the adjacent Emancipation Memorial, which Bethune faces? What are the most striking parallels and differences between the two monuments? You may wish to consider the two artists’ different uses of verticality, clothedness, the written word, texture, and emotional mood. In particular, you may wish to compare the arm and hand gestures of the five different sculpted figures in the park: what is accomplished by these various positioning of the upper appendages?

Suggested Creative Responses

• Write, or perhaps perform, a conversation among the given figures in the two sculptures. What might they have to say to one another?