Mary McLeod Bethune: Village of God by Yahya Jongintaba (review)

The life, legacy, vision, and reach of Mary McLeod Bethune indelibly marked the twentieth century. Known as Mrs. Bethune, Dr. Bethune, Mother Bethune, or Sister Bethune, she lived a selfless life shaped by the cultural, emotional, and spiritual deposits made by her grandmother, mother, and father. She was born with a birth caul, which in folklore was purported to mean that she would see possibilities and potentialities beyond the average person. Her parents cultivated her innate talent and encouraged her quest for education. Clearly, these prophecies manifested over her nearly eighty years of life. During her retirement years, she sought to pen an autobiography. In her essay "How God Has Helped Me," she wrote, "I am conscious of the increasing power of God all through the years. He is today a sustaining power, comforting and controlling the way I take" ("How God Has Helped Me," in Chiazam Ugo Okoye, ed., Mary McLeod Bethune: Words of Wisdom [Bloomington, Ind., 2008], p. 63). In this essay, she recounted her life from the little village school in South Carolina to the campus of Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida.

This essay is the foundational document Yahya Jongintaba uses to situate Mary McLeod Bethune: Village of God. Jongintaba employs the idea of a village as a scene, story, place, being, language, idiom, and mission through which the life of Bethune is infused with divinely ordered steps. This biography of Bethune deviates from the chronological structure, preferring a religious structure in five parts: Freedom, Creativity, Integrity, Discipline, and Love. Jongintaba posits, "Who knows but that the foregoing five virtues are the framework by which God enables Mary to read into deeper and deeper layers of books over the course of her years" (p. 25).

Chapters 1 and 2 provide an exegesis of Rackham Holt's Mary McLeod Bethune: A Biography (Garden City, N.Y., 1964) filtered through ideals of Christian freedom and creativity. Here Jongintaba shares that Bethune's initial desire was to become a missionary sent to Africa. Her longing for Africa was fulfilled in 1952 when she traveled to Liberia at the age of seventy-six. Africa, nature, and closeness to God were interconnected and contributed to her sense of purpose and her worldview. "Africa is a blessed place to Mary but so is the nature and history of the land with its African retentions into which she was born in rural Sumter County, South Carolina," Jongintaba writes (p. 47). Chapter 3 examines integrity: Jongintaba writes, "Woman is the custodian of the future. If she fails in the home, she fails forever … because the home is the link between the womb and the further forms of [the] village" (p. 136). Chapters 4 and 5 feature the demonstrative elements of Bethune's spiritual ideals, discipline, and love. These traits were infused throughout her institutional and organizational affiliations as essential building blocks for faith-led women.

In closing, Jongintaba provides an exhaustive presentation of Bethune's writings, which allow Bethune to speak directly to the reader. The use of her diaries, lectures, and speeches demonstrates the divine intervention in her life. However, the spiritual filter used is esoteric at times, making the larger work hard to follow. Other distractions were the use of Mary in lieu of Bethune and citing her birthday as May 10, not July 10, throughout the book until page 266. Lastly, the foundational essay, "How God Has Helped Me," should have been included for reference. The best audiences for this book are Bethune scholars, womanist theologians, historians, and sociologists.