Johnson: Were there any other colored children around your age? What was their outlook?
Bethune: There was nothing for them to aspire to – it was an incentive to me, and of course, many followers after that. Many boys and girls of the community. A new life came into the district.
Sunday afternoon I would take the farm children for miles around – I would give them whatever I had learned during the week..Poetry, reading, songs, etc…I would give to them as often as I got. As I got I gave. They gave me a broader capacity for taking in and I feel that up to today, I feel it in all things, and I feel that as I give I get.
Of course I became a very definite favorite in the family – my mother, father, sisters and brothers, people in the community all loved me. I never had difficulty getting people to follow me. Never, from the start. They seemed to realize the seriousness and unselfishness of my motives.
When I got so I could do the counting, all the papers—of both the whites and colored people—were put into my lap—the papers showing the weights of the cotton, and how much…from the weighing of the cotton. When we went to pick cotton for white people they said, “Let Mary Jane put down the number of pounds.”
