That evening, some students joined outsiders in riots turning the campus into a battlefield. Mitchell, a senior journalism major from Memphis, witnessed the rioting, heard gunshots and saw federal marshals resort to tear gas to back off the crowds.
As head of The Daily Mississippian, she wrote an editorial against the violence and published it in a special edition of the newspaper delivered the following day.Her 228-word commentary, titled “The Violence Will Not Help,” read in part: “This is an appeal to the entire student body and to anyone concerned with the present situation. Not only do the students chance forfeiting their education by participating in riots, but they are bringing dishonor and shame to the university and to the State of Mississippi.”
Urging outsiders to return home, she declared that the situation was “a battle between the State of Mississippi and the United States government” and that everyone “should follow the advice of Gov. Ross Barnett by not taking any action for violence.”
The editorial attracted national attention for Mitchell and brought a flood of responses varying from hate mail to admiration, and eventually garnered her a Pulitzer Prize nomination.
Her UM donation, which is sheltered in the J.D. Williams Library’s Department of Archives and Special Collections, includes letters to the editor, photographs, clippings, old newspapers and other ephemera, some pulled from her Pulitzer Prize scrapbook.
“This is a great addition to our collection,” said Jennifer Ford, head of Archives and Special Collections. “It shows the heart and courage of someone who stood up for human rights against violence.”
The collection is being processed and a Finding Aid compiled, and it should be available to the public by this fall, Ford said.
Over the years, Mitchell said, people encouraged her to write a book about her Ole Miss experience, but she never got around to it.
“I’m 70 years old and I’m never going to write that book, but I hope this collection will be valuable to other people – researchers, writers and others interested in history.”
Reminiscing about her Ole Miss experience, she said, “I was at the right place at the right time in terms of confirming my beliefs, standing up for Mississippi and being prepared to face the consequences.
“I certainly found out who my friends were and who my enemies were. I even had politicians come out against me in order to help their campaigns.”
Because of her editorials, Mitchell was censured by the Campus Senate some two months after Meredith’s enrollment.
“That did happen, and national media covered it,” she said. “As it turned out, I got a lot of positive press all over the world, but unfortunately the censure reflected poorly on the university.”
Almost 40 years later, the censure was rescinded.
“I was shocked and really touched,” Mitchell said. “That had to be one of the most emotional days of my life.”
Mitchell said she has no regrets and owes much to Ole Miss.
After graduating, she served internships with World-Telegram and Sun in New York and UPI in London. She said her original plan was to continue her career in the Mid-South, since as a student she had worked for the Memphis Commercial Appeal at UM and in Jackson, Tenn., and Blytheville, Ark.
But Mitchell stayed in the New York area and did newspaper-related work, including editing employee publications for Citibank and owning several weekly newspapers with her husband in New Jersey for 25 years. She retired as deputy director of the New Jersey Council on Affordable Housing. However, she continues writing a weekly cooking column, which she has done for more than 35 years.
For more information about collections at the J.D. Williams Library, visit http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/general_library/intro/collections.html.