On the height and heft of a heroine

“A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit: The Vision of Mary McLeod Bethune” by Noliwe Rooks

c.2024,

Penguin Press                                                

$28.00                                

208 pages

Ten feet tall. Larger than life.

Surely, that describes the person in history you most admire. He was a giant among men. Her actions were bigger than anyone could imagine in her time and place. You think about that a lot, and the rest of their story. Is there, as in “A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit” by Noliwe Rooks, more to learn?

In the early winter of 1938, Eleanor Roosevelt took a stand when she followed her friend, Mary McLeod Bethune into the Southern Conference for Human Welfare and sat beside Bethune, defying the racist Public Safety Commissionor of Birmingham, Alabama. That’s an account that’s easy to find anywhere, and it’s thrilling, but the story misses something: at one point, the conference’s organizer asked for “Mary” to come up to the platform.

Bethune drew herself up and told the organizer “My name is Mrs. Bethune.”

Says Rooks, it was uncommon for a Black woman to demand that she be called by a name she chose. That Bethune did is just one of the things that stick in Rooks’ mind.

Bethune was her parents’ fifteenth child and the first one born free. That wasn’t her last “first”: she was the first Black woman to establish a hospital for Black Floridians, and the first Black woman to launch an HBCU for young Black women in the eastern U.S.. Rooks says that Bethune conceived of the idea of the Tuskegee Airmen, she was the founder of several civil rights organizations and served on the boards and committees of others; she was a teacher who held literacy classes for Black adult voters in the South; and she opened Florida’s first beach exclusively “for Black people.”

Rooks says that her grandparents knew Bethune and, in doing research for this book, her understanding of Bethune was totally changed. Bethune was more than an activist – she was also a dream maker and “the first lady of Black America.”

Here’s something you won’t often see in this column: “A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit” is not lengthy enough. Not by a long shot.

Author Noliwe Rooks brings the story of Mary McLeod Bethune to readers’ attention, but there could’ve been more. We get a nice, albeit scattered, list of Bethune’s work and accomplishments, but you may be left with the sense that the list is somehow incomplete. Even Rooks’ thoughts and the stories of her own ancestors is so good that you’ll be left wanting.

If only this book was longer.

This means you’ll devour what is here: the stories, the jaw-dropping achievements, and a lingering feeling that Bethune never felt like she was done, like there was always more to do. Like Rooks, you may find that that, and Bethune, stick in your mind awhile.

Absolutely, this book will send you looking for more information on this talented, driven, brilliant woman. What you’ll find here is a little short on substance but still,  as an account of the magnitude of one woman’s accomplishments, “A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit” is a “ten.”

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If you’re up for more unique history, look for “On a Move: Philadelphia’s Notorious Bombing and a Native Son’s Lifelong Battle for Justice” by Mike Africa, Jr. It’s the story of MOVE, a Black Civil Liberties organization and the eleven people killed in a police bombing in 1985. One of those affected in the aftermath was Africa, whose parents were incarcerated and who remembers the bombing and the ensuing questions surrounding it. This is a deeply moving story that sheds light on a little-discussed chapter in history.