Mary McLeod Bethune was the daughter of formerly enslaved parents who became the most influential Black educator in the country and an adviser to Franklin D. Roosevelt. Her modest two-storey clapboard house, on the campus of Bethune-Cookman University, was both her home and the unofficial salon where she received presidents, NAACP organisers and visiting dignitaries from the 1920s until her death here in 1955.
The house is preserved as a National Historic Landmark, displaying her furniture, library, awards, and personal effects largely as she left them. Free docent-led tours run on weekdays — the guides on the campus are themselves students at the university she founded. Combine it with a wander through the historic core of the surrounding campus, including White Hall.