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 exhibit examines the fascinating life of Edward Mitchell from Saint-Pierre, to Dartmouth, to Georgeville.
The exhibit text was written by Forrester “Woody” Lee ’68, co-author of A Noble and Independent Course: The Life of the Reverend Edward Mitchell (Hanover: Dartmouth College Press, 2018). The items for the original exhibit in Rauner Special Collections Library were selected and mounted by Jay Satterfield. Digital exhibit by August Guszkowski. French translation by Annabelle Cone. Special thanks to the McCord Stewart Museum in Montreal for supplying scans of key documents from the Mitchell Family Fonds.