Creator: Mitchell, Samuel Chiles, 1864-1948.
Collection number: 1003
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Abstract: Samuel Chiles Mitchell was president of the University of South Carolina, 1908-1913; president of the Medical College of Virginia, 1913-1914; president of Delaware College, 1914-1920; professor of history at the University of Richmond, 1895-1908 and 1920-1945; trustee of the Negro Rural School Fund of the Anna T. Jeanes Foundation, 1908-1937. The collection contains family, personal, and professional correspondence; an autobiography by Samuel Chiles Mitchell; and other papers of Mitchell and his family. Included are letters from his professional colleagues and former students, labor leaders, and newspaper editors concerning the affairs of various institutions with which Mitchell was connected, public and higher education in the South, race relations, the education of African Americans, Jewish charitable activities, Baptist institutions and activities, the Young Men’s Christian Association, labor-management relations and the unionization of southern workers, the New Deal, and other social and political issues. Family letters include those from Alice Broadus Mitchell to her mother discussing family life, and letters of the Mitchell children: Broadus, economic historian and professor at Occidental College, Johns Hopkins University, and Rutgers University, Socialist, and employee of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union; Terry, advertising executive in Waynesboro, Pa.; George, economist, instructor at Columbia University, and employee of the Resettlement Administration, Congress of Industrial Organizations, and Southern Regional Council; Morris, teacher at Ellerbe, N.C., the Park School in Snyder, N.Y., Teachers College at Columbia University, and Alabama State Teachers College, and secretary of the Southeastern Cooperative League in Clarksville, Ga.; and Mary, wife of George Orr Clifford, businessman of Akron, Ohio, Evansville, Ind., Bala-Cynwyd, Pa., Ilion, N.Y., and Southport, Conn. Notable correspondents include Edwin A. Alderman, Charles William Dabney, Virginius Dabney, Douglas Southall Freeman, Howard Odum, and George Foster Peabody.
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: Personal and professional correspondence of Samuel Chiles Mitchell, president of the Universities of South Carolina and Delaware and history professor at the University of Richmond. Involved in issues of higher education, including public schools for whites and blacks in Virginia, Mitchell served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Negro Rural School Fund, Anna T. Jeanes Foundation (1908-1937), and Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, Hampton, Virginia (1920s-1931).
In Series A, there is a substantial amount of correspondence from educators and staff at Hampton Institute during the 1920s (Boxes 1-5). Mitchell also discusses race relations in the volume of his autobiography “An Aftermath of Appomattox – A Memoir”.