First for a First

U.S. Negroes look upon Mrs. Mary McLeod Bethune as the First Lady of their race. She was born of former slaves in South Carolina, walked five miles a day to school. Years later, she founded a school of her own, finally became president of coeducational Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Fla. At 73, she is a dumpy, bright-eyed lady with a penchant for floppy hats and an unquenchably quiet determination to better the lot of her race. "I like Mary Bethune," Franklin D. Roosevelt once remarked. "She has kept her feet on the ground--and they are definitely planted in plowed soil."

Last week, Mary Bethune's plowing reaped a reward not even the late great Booker T. Washington had achieved. At Winter Park, Fla., she had been awarded an honorary degree (Doctor of Humanities) from Rollins College. It was the first time a Negro had ever been honored that way by a white college in the South.

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