Bethune: Out of Darkness Into the Light of Freedom: Mary’s Grandbabies

This book is about the hunger to be free. It’s a love story, it’s a dream of owning your own business and controlling your own life while at the same time, a harsh reminder of man’s inhumanity to man. Starting out with nothing but faith in God and hard work against all odds, this book is about pride and dignity, persistence, and finding a way to make life meaningful all wrapped up into one. Thus, it is with great honor that I write this foreword for my good friend and unstoppable spirit, Dr. Evelyn Bethune—speaker, author, educator, community activist, and servant leader.

Get ready to step back a moment in time so dark that James Weldon Johnson would have called it, “When hope unborn had died.” A time when a Black enslaved family, driven by an unquenchable thirst to be free, inspired by memories of living a life of royalty, and fortified by faith, carved out a tunnel of hope through mountains of despair.

Each page of BETHUNE: Out of the Darkness into the Light of Freedom gives us a rare insight into the mindset of a people who refused to be broken, all the while experiencing the worst form of slavery and oppression the world has ever known. Each chapter reminds us just how powerful we are as a people, especially when we take into account that during this period, Black slaves were relegated to being treated like cattle, less than human. Blacks were lynched if they were caught trying to learn how to read. It was law that a Black man had no rights a white man had to respect. Even the great Black scientist George Washington Carver was traded for a horse when he was a baby. These societal conditions gave birth to the Bethune family.