When the Ku Klux Klan heard about the school, they came one night to burn it down. They waited outside with torches, trying to intimidate her into closing.
Mary McLeod Bethune stood in the doorway and refused to move. She ordered the outdoor floodlights turned on, leaving the Klan standing in pools of light while terrified students watched from darkened windows. Then she led her girls in singing spirituals.
The Klan left. They never came back.
Mary knew her students needed more than education—they needed healthcare. In 1911, when one of her students fell desperately ill and was turned away from the whites-only hospital, Mary opened the first Black hospital in Daytona Beach. It started with two beds. Within a few years, it held twenty. During the 1918 flu pandemic, when the hospital overflowed, she moved patients into the school auditorium. McLeod Hospital saved countless Black lives over its twenty years of operation.
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