Arthur W. Mitchell papers

Scope and Content

Correspondence, speeches, newsclippings, and other papers of Mitchell, who served as U.S. Congressman from the First Congressional District, Chicago (Ill.), 1935-1943. Mitchell was the first African American Democrat to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, and his papers contain many incoming letters from throughout the country on racial issues. Additional topics include Mitchell's election campaigns against Oscar DePriest and others, service in Congress and on the Post Office and Post Roads Committee, anti-lynching legislation, Mitchell's U.S. Supreme Court case concerning racial discrimination against him as a railroad passenger, and his work for the Democratic National Campaign Committee during the 1936 Presidential election. Early materials deal with Armstrong Agricultural School, Mutual Housing Company, personal and family matters; later topics include African Americans at U.S. military and naval academies; African American migration from the South to the North; U.S. Civil Service reform; the establishment of old age and soldiers' pensions; the government of the Virgin Islands in the West Indies; Jake Guzik, one of Mitchell's law clients; and the entry of the United States into World War II. Due to the chronological arrangement of the collection, materials about particular topics often are intermingled throughout the collection.