“Born in the Wake of Freedom”

” He had a gun in his hand, truth at his lips and an army at his back,”  – John H Mitchell

The Civil War and slavery lay just seventeen years behind. One of the stormiest periods in the history of the nation was drawing to a close. The assassination of Lincoln, the turmoil of reconstruction and the Hayes-Tilden controversy were fresh in the memories of Richmonders of that day. Gathering in an upper room of a building located near the corner of Third and Broad streets thirteen former slaves (James H. Hayes, James H. Johnston, E.R. Carter, Walter Fitzhugh, Henry Hucles, Albert V. Norrell, Benjamin A. Graves, James E. Merriweather, Edward A. Randolph, William H. Andrews and Reuben T. Hill) pooled their meager resources and started America’s oldest Negro newspaper on a career which was destined to play an important part in molding the opinions of Negroes in this city, state and nation. [Richmond Planet, 5/28/1938]

The first editors of the Planet were Edwin Archer Randolph, a Yale graduate and a leading politician of his day, who served as editor- in-chief. James E. Merriwether, an outstanding educator and civic leader, and E.R. Carter, also prominent in politics, served under Randolph as contributing editors. Reuben T. Hill was selected to manage the paper while the other members of the group, mostly employed as public school teachers, made occasional contributions to its columns. [Richmond Planet, 5/28/1938]

No stranger to controversy even in its early days, the Planet took a strong editorial stance against the rumor that the Richmond School Board was planning to sack the Negro School Principals: James H. Hayes, Albert V. Norell, and James Johnston. The School Board was so displeased that most of the male Negro school teachers lost their jobs. Among them, John Mitchell, Jr.

Although Mitchell did not found the Richmond Planet, a newspaper,”born in the wake of freedom,” nor was he its first editor, it was under his tenure that the Planet gained its well-deserved reputation as a proponent of racial equality and of rights for the African-American community.

John Mitchell JR, Black Power Was Born in RVA, Richmond Planet Paper, Armed Self Defense – Hak Kweli Shakur

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Born a slave in Richmond on July 11, 1863, Mitchell was appointed editor of the weekly paper in 1884 at the age of just twenty-one. He quickly gained a reputation as a man determined to expose racial injustice wherever it lurked. One writer described him as, “dar[ing] to hurl the thunderbolts of truth into the ranks of the wicked.” “No stronger race man is known among us,” the adulation continued. “Clinging to no party, subserving to no one interest save that of the oppressed, he throws the full force of heart and mind into every question that will affect…the welfare of his brethren.” [Freeman, (Indianapolis, Indiana, 8/30/1890)]

Under Mitchell, the Planet’s masthead, the ‘Strong Arm’, was a flexed bicep surrounded by shock waves that radiated out from a clenched fist, reflecting the force and energy with which Mitchell projected his opinions. For forty-five years, the Planet covered news: local; national; and worldwide. Much of the paper’s focus, however was on lynchings, segregation and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. Deterred by none, Mitchell’s reports, editorials and cartoons denounced racial prejudice and ridiculed its perpetrators.

The images that you are about to see are taken directly from the microfilmed pages of the Planet itself. They open a window into the past and allow us to look back to a dark and desperate time in our nation’s history when Jim Crow prevailed and the lynch mob ruled. 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

http://www.lva.virginia.gov/exhibits/mitchell/ajax.htm

John Mitchell, Jr. was born a slave in Richmond, Virginia. After the war, he will become an active civic leader as well as a civil rights activist in Richmond’s Jackson Ward community. The area gained notoriety as being a hub for freedmen both before and after the Civil War and was given the nickname: “Black Wall Street of America.”  In 1884, Mitchell joins the “Richmond Planet” and was made an editor. Previously he had been a teacher in local schools in the community. As a journalist, Mitchell campaigned against lynching and Jim Crow. Due to the large concentration of white supremacist groups in the region, writing about these issues put Mitchell in danger:

Mitchell himself was threatened with hanging at the hands of a Charlotte County mob angered by his reporting of the lynching, there, of Richard Walker in May 1886. Mitchell was sent a rope with a note attached warning him that he would be lynched himself if he ever set foot in the county. In reply, and borrowing a line from Shakespeare, Mitchell had this to say: “There are no terrors, Cassius, in your threats, for I am so strong in honesty that they pass me like the idle wind, which I respect not.” Then, armed with two Smith & Wesson pistols, he boarded a train for Smithville and undeterred walked the five miles from the states to the site of the hanging.” [Maurice Duke and Daniel P. Jordan, eds., A Richmond Reader: 1733-1983, (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1983), pp. 327-328]

Mitchell became a leader of the Knights of Pythias both locally and on the state level where he remained an active leader until the 1920’s. He was also president of the National Afro-American Press Association and founder and president of the Mechanic’s Saving Bank in Richmond. In 1904, Richmond passed a new law to enforce segregated seating on its trolleys and to protest, Mitchell ordered a boycott of the system which was covered in his article: “Street Car Trap.”

Mitchell also finds himself to be active in politics. In both 1892 and 1894 he runs for and is elected to a seat as a Richmond City alderman. In 1921, Mitchell runs for governor of Virginia on the “Lilly Black” Republican ticket. This loss would come to haunt him in his later years as his run for governor itself was opposed by other African Americans in the community for fear that it would divide the black vote.

However, the most ambitious of all of Mitchell’s goals was his Mechanics Savings Bank where he served as both President and founder. Despite all of his efforts, by 1922, the bank was failing and Mitchell was accused of misusing tens of thousands of dollars which will eventually take him to the State Supreme Court where he countered charges against him. Mitchell was eventually cleared of all charges but the bank went into receivership in 1923 and then re-charted by the State in 1924. After the intense legal battle, Mitchell found himself stripped of all assets despite remaining the editor of the Richmond Planet until his death.

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