Mitchell, Broadus and Louise Pearson Mitchell

MITCHELL, BROADUS (1892-1988) and LOUISE PEARSON MITCHELL (1906-1986). Scholars of US economic and legal history, Broadus and Louise Mitchell wrote two books together and supported several Left causes and movements during the 1930s and 1940s. In 1939, Broadus Mitchell ran for Maryland governor on the Socialist Party ticket. Louise Pearson Mitchell served on the editorial staff of the Daily Worker in the 1940s.

Born in Georgetown, Kentucky, John Broadus Mitchell received his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 1918. He specialized in southern economic history and published his dissertation in 1921, to lasting acclaim, as The Rise of Cotton Mills in the South. Mitchell viewed the birth of industry in the rural South as a “progressive” development but warned against the potential rise of an “aristocracy of capital” that might “now preclude industrial democracy.” He went on to write several books on Alexander Hamilton and other topics in U.S. economic history.

In the 1920s, interested workers’ education, he taught at the Summer School for Women Workers at Bryn Mawr College and at the Southern Summer School for Women Workers at Sweet Briar College. He held a regular faculty position at his alma mater, beginning in 1919.

Influenced by his father, a history professor, Mitchell grew up deeply committed to civil rights. In 1935, he stepped forward to play an active and vocal role a local anti-lynching movement after a series of brutal murders along the Eastern Shore of Maryland. In 1939, Mitchell advocated for the admission of a Black student to the graduate program at Johns Hopkins and Mitchell resigned in protest when the administration refused. He later secured a position at Rutgers University and went on to oppose the impact of McCarthyism on the institution.

Broadus Mitchell found a kindred spirit in Louise Pearson Blodgett, whom her married in 1936. Together they wrote several books, including the sweeping and very lengthy American Economic History (1947) and A Biography of the U.S. Constitution: Its Origin, Formation, Adoption, Interpretation (1964). The latter presented, according to one reviewer an endorsement of Supreme Court activism –“when socially progressive.”

Louise Mitchell, born in Haddonfield, New Jersey, also trained as an economic historian. In the 1940s, she joined the editorial staff of the Daily Worker and reigned as the Communist Party USA’s authority on consumer affairs. She wrote several pamphlets related to the domestic conditions of World War II and its immediate aftermath. The federal government’s programs of rationing and price-control, the problems of inflation, and food shortages figured prominently in her popular writings. She addressed women, asking them to form mothers’ groups and defense councils to keep pressure on the U.S. Congress to protect their interests. After the war, she advocated the formation of a broad coalition of labor, community, and women’s groups to fight for rent control. She focused in particular on housing discrimination of ethnic groups and especially African Americans living in Harlem. “Decent housing for all people,” she wrote, “cannot be achieved so long as home building remains a private business for profit only.”

Mitchell, Broadus. Oral History Interview. August 14 & 15, 1977. Documenting the American South. Southern Oral History Program Collection. University of North Carolina. https://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/B-0024/menu.html

Mitchell, Louise, America’s Housing Crisis. New York: New Century Publishers, 1946. ULS University of Pittsburgh Digital Collections. https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735061658740#page/1/mode/2up/search/America's+housing+crisis

Mitchell, Louise. Food Prices and Rationing. ULS University of Pittsburgh Digital Collection. https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735061658369/viewer#page/1/mode/2up

Mitchell, Louise. Hold That Rent Ceiling. New York: New Century Publishers. 1947. UKS University of Pittsburgh Digital Collections. https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735061658708#page/1/mode/2up/search/hold+that+rent+ceiling