In the tradition of Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, the Black Women’s Power Circle seeks to harness womanpower within the ranks of black women students at Bethune Cookman University.  The Black Women’s Power Circle is designed to enable students from all walks of life, different age groups and coming from all corners of the globe to come together and discuss the issues, challenges and triumphs that they have encounters.  This is a forum where black women students at Bethune Cookman University have an opportunity to get together and talk – about politics, culture, male and female relationship, the arts, education or whatever topics they chose to discuss.  The Power Circle provides an interactive, informal and entertaining opportunity for up-close-and-personal dialogue between the young female students and female professors.   The Power Circle meetings are dynamic and festive, leaving students and professors even more informed about the strengths and abilities of black women.  The Power Circle is perfect venue for attendees to discuss the problems that confront black women in today’s society, while also enhancing students’ critical thinking and cognitive learning skills.  The of the Power Circle offers a diversity of topics that are designed to broadened intellectual and global horizons.

 The Black Women’s Power Circle meets every other Tuesday, in the lobby of the Fine Arts Building at 5 p.m.  Based on the conversations that have occurred in the past, the previous meeting often last for over two.  Please come and join us.  Cause everybody got something to say.

-Background Information-

In 1935, Mary McLeod Bethune realized that there was unharnessed womanpower within the ranks of black women.  She could not rest until she saw that this vessel of black woman power was harnessed.  She put out a call to address this concern to black women across the United Stated and 28 national black women leaders responded to her call.  Dr. Bethune informed these women that just another organization was not what was needed.  She stated that black women needed to get together and talk.  One of her solution was the salon or as Dr. Cheryll Hardison-Dayton calls it, a “black women’s power circle.

 The problems and issues that Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune recognized still exist today. A large number of black women feel pressure to compromise their true selves as they navigate America’s racial and gender bigotry.  For centuries, many black women have been forced to alter their speech, appearance and behavior to cope with racial and gender discrimination.  Finally, many have often changed the expectations that they have for themselves as goals and endeavors beyond their reach.  These changes have caused some of them to shift inward and internalized the pain of negative stereotypes that they encounter daily.  Others have challenged these issues and fought back.  Many black women have been forced to live double lives, which has resulted in the development of survival skills and techniques to combat the ever present on slaughter of gender and racial oppression. Black women who have development these talents were often described as strong black women such as Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune.