"Mary McLeod Bethune, one of seventeen children born of slave parents, had outstanding courage, great determination, and a dream. A barefoot child on a South Carolina cottonfield, she was reached by one of the early mission schools, and that first taste of knowledge inspired a career in education and humanitariansim. With the aid of scholarships and money earned at any kind of menial work she could find, she graduated from Scotia Seminary in Concord, North Carolina, and from Moddy Bible Institute in Chicago. She founded a college for Negroes in Florida, starting with $1.50 and faith in God, using charred splinters for pencils, mashed elderberries for ink, packing boxes for furniture. Bethune-Cookman College today is valued at more than $1,000,000." -- from book jacket.