Dark Triumph

Long recognized as one of the most distinguished educators in the U. S. is Mary McLeod Bethune, "The Booker T. Washington of Florida," who once taught five little black girls in a cabin on a Florida dump and is now president of Daytona Beach's $800,000 co-educational Bethune-Cookman College. Since she turned up in Washington as director of the Division of Negro Affairs in Aubrey Williams' National Youth Administration, Mrs. Bethune has also won recognition as one of her race's most adroit politicians.

As a politician, Mrs. Bethune was in her glory last week. To her second National Conference on Problems of the Negro & Negro Youth came 125 delegates to urge abolition of poll taxes, attack discrimination against Negroes in the Army & Navy, TVA, Federal Housing Administration. To address the convention, in the Department of Labor auditorium, came Mrs. Bethune's friend, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt. Speaking as an "individual," Mrs. Roosevelt urged passage of the Anti-Lynching Bill which Southern Senators filibustered to death last year.

Next night 36 proud delegates attended a banquet given by the Civil Liberties Commission of the Colored Elks to honor six Congressmen chosen as champions of the underprivileged. A triumph was the banqueting place: the private red-&-gilt dining room (attached to the House Restaurant) of Speaker William Brockman Bankhead of Alabama.

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