Born near Mayesville, South Carolina, July 10, , she was the 15th of 17 children of former slaves who had purchased a small farm after the Civil War. Through the influence of her parents, Samuel and Patsy McIntosh McLeod, as well as her own self-determination, she raised herself from the position of a member of a cotton farming family to become an internationally known figure.
At a time when African Americans rarely attained advanced education due to discriminatory practices, Mary McLeod attended the recently opened Trinity Presbyterian Mission School in Mayesville from to Aided by a scholarship and the encouragement of her mentor, Emma Wilson, she attended Scotia Seminary for Negro Girls later Barber-Scotia College in Concord, North Carolina, a missionary outpost of northern Presbyterians that emphasized religious instruction and industrial education.
At Scotia, she completed the high school program in and the Normal and Scientific Course two years later. Although she attended the Bible Institute for Home and Foreign Missions later the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois, during with plans to become a missionary, she was refused a commission to serve in Africa by the Presbyterian Mission Board.
Disappointed by this turn of events, Mary McLeod returned to South Carolina and began her first teaching job at the Trinity Presbyterian Mission School in Mayesville, where she had once been a student.
Shortly thereafter, the Presbyterian board appointed her to a teaching position at Haines Normal and Industrial Institute in Augusta, Georgia.
