DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — The City of Daytona Beach unveiled a new bronzed statue of Mary McLeod Bethune on Thursday.
This unveiling comes a little more than a month after the civil rights icon and educator became the first African American person to have a state-commissioned statue in the National Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol.
The new statue is an exact replica of the statue at the U.S Capitol. Orlando's WESH-TV reported that the statue is made from the same marble and was cast from the same model used for the original.
Known as the "The First Lady of Struggle" because of her commitment to Civil Rights, Bethune was born to former slaves, Samuel and Patsy McLeod, on July 10, 1875, near Maysville, South Carolina.
According to an article by the National Women's History Museum, Bethune could pick 250 pounds of cotton a day by the age of 9. During the age of reconstruction, Bethune benefited from many of the efforts to educate African Americans after the war.
Later in Bethune's life, the article explained, she would move to Palatka, Florida, and open a boarding school, the Daytona Beach Literary and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls.
Eventually, her school would become a college, currently known as Bethune-Cookman University, a private historically-Black university.
