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Edward Mitchell was the first student of African descent to attend Dartmouth College. In 1824, students protested the Board of Trustees' decision not to admit Mitchell because of his race. The students’ activism was supported by the faculty, the Board relented, and Mitchell took his rightful place in the student body. Born in Saint-Pierre, Martinique, in 1792, he had been a sailor and a porter before coming to Hanover. He graduated from Dartmouth in 1828, was ordained, and moved to Georgeville, Canada, where he found community and his calling in ministry.
This collaborative project is digitizing and bringing together primary documents surrounding Mitchell’s life from the McCord Stewart Museum in Montreal and from the Dartmouth Library. This robust digital collection and associated online exhibit will make documentary evidence from Mitchell’s life available to students, scholars, and the general public.
Learn more about these materials by viewing the digital exhibit Finding Community: The Life of Edward Mitchell 1828.
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Works
Newspaper account of the graduation ceremony listing Mitchell
Only transcribe text that mentions Edward Mitchell or Dartmouth College.
Petition from Leonard Worcester, Henry Shedd, Charles Dexter Cleveland, and Nathaniel Folsom to the Dartmouth College Faculty, 25 September 1824
Society of Social Friends, Minutes, October 27, 1824.
A selection of meeting minutes that documents Mitchell's induction into the Society of Social Friends.
Student Accounts for Edward Mitchell
A selection from a book of student accounts showing the expenses paid by Mitchell for tuition, room and board, and interest, among other charges, from October 1824 through August 1828.
William Chamberlain, “List of Candidates for the Degree of A.B. Who Have Paid All Their Bills and Fees for Graduation at the College Treasury,” 1828.
A document attesting that each of the 41 members of the class of 1828 have paid all outstanding bills and fees prior to graduation.