Born to former slaves just 10 years after the end of the Civil War, this Sumter County native decided early on that education was the key to ending the cycle of poverty. In 1904, she started a small school for African-American girls which eventually became Bethune-Cookman University. Under Franklin Roosevelt she served as Special Advisor on Minority Affairs, and in 1935 she founded the National Council for Negro Women to "represent the national and international concerns of Black women." Her portrait hangs in South Carolina's State House in Columbia.

Credit: https://www.sciway.net/hist/people/women.html