Founder of Bethune-Cookman College, Mary had a strong desire for learning, but she was not able to attend school until she was eleven when a school finally opened five miles from her home. After graduation, she received a scholarship from a white female philanthropist. In 1893, she graduated from Scotia Seminary in Concord, North Carolina. Later, she attended the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois with a goal in mind to serve as a missionary in Africa. When the missionary trip did not work out, she accepted a teaching job. In 1904, with only $1.50, she founded a school for girls in Daytona Beach, Florida. The school began in an old house next to a city dump with a student body consisting of five little girls and her four year old son. By 1923, the school became Bethune-Cookman College and it had 600 students, 32 faculty members and an $800,000 campus free of debt.