Until as late as 1970, if you wanted to easily find the leaders of African-American communities in the South, you would do best to look in the segregated Black schools. The most educated, highly-regarded, and active members of the community could be found there, working as school teachers or administrators. The supervisors of African American schools in hundreds of school districts throughout the South were called Jeanes Teachers, or Supervisors, and they exemplified leadership. Their titles were named for the Philadelphia Quaker philanthropist behind the Jeanes program, Anna T. Jeanes.
The Bossier Parish School Board tapped Charlotte Mitchell as its second Jeanes Teacher in 1925, following Carrie Martin. Mrs. Mitchell supervised Bossier Parish’s approximately one hundred African-American teachers spread throughout the rural parish. The parish superintendent stated that Mrs. Mitchell was expected to travel throughout Bossier to “Improve classroom instruction, direct industrial activities and promote production and preservation of foods, through school activities.”
Charlotte Watson Mitchell was born in Benton, Bossier Parish in 1880 to Ralph and Jane Watson. Ralph Watson was born enslaved in South Carolina in about 1825. Jane Watson was also born in South Carolina, in 1843. According to the 1880 Census, Ralph Watson could read but not write. He worked as a janitor at the Bossier Parish courthouse in the parish seat of Benton and owned 50 acres that he farmed. In 1912 Charlotte Watson married Oliver L. Mitchell. Oliver Mitchell worked in many occupations during his lifetime, including as a preacher in the Colored Methodist Episcopal (C.M.E.) Church, teacher, school administrator, and farmer.
When Charlotte Mitchell became a Jeanes Teacher for Bossier schools, she was 45 years old and the mother of three young children. Husband Oliver was working as principal of what became the Bossier Parish Training School in Benton where the family eventually lived on campus. As the “new” Jeanes Teacher, Charlotte Mitchell already had thirty-one years of teaching under her belt, mostly in rural schools, including eleven years in a one or two-teacher schoolhouse where she was responsible for teaching children in multiple grades at one time. She also taught algebra and Latin at the high school level and spent a year as a Jeanes Teacher in Lafayette County, Arkansas immediately north of Bossier Parish.
Charlotte Mitchell kept up Carrie Martin’s busy pace. In a “Report of Jeanes Agents” for 1928-29, there were sixty-two “Negro” public schools in Bossier Parish. She visited all but two of them over an average school term of 106 days. She also raised $1,615.00 for new, improved school buildings. On her visits, Mrs. Mitchell would check on the progress of the teachers. Retired Bossier Parish teacher Minnie B. Walker Payne remembered Charlotte Mitchell “was the supervisor of the school. And she would come around and sit…and write as you teach. Every class you taught she would write. After she would do that, she would have a conference with you and tell you of your weak points and tell your strong points…She never was harsh and she kept a smile. And she said, ‘Now teacher, it should be this way.’”
Ms. Payne also remembered how Charlotte Mitchell would help the teachers take care of the nutritional needs of the students. She reminisced:
And then too, we didn't have lunchrooms. We had…big old iron heaters like that with the pipe. And we would get commodities…I never will forget [Charlotte Mitchell]. In this commodity it was a lot of cabbage and apples. And she taught us how to cook apple and cabbage together. Oh, honey that's the best stuff in the world. You wouldn't believe it…Layer of apple, layer of cabbage on that wooden heater, get a great big old boil. And it was the best something.
Mrs. Payne said that Mrs. Mitchell was responsible for distributing the food for the schools, commodities that (along with all the cabbage and apples) typically included giant cans of vegetable soup that the teachers would heat up for the students.
A crowning achievement of Charlotte Mitchell’s tenure was the opening of the Bossier Parish Training School in Benton in 1928, producing its first secondary-level graduating class in in 1932. Training schools were post-elementary schools with an emphasis on industrial subjects or teacher training. The training school eventually expanded its offerings to increase the local supply of African American teachers by offering two years of college. As the only school of its kind in the parish, many students boarded in dormitories or with local families.
As a Jeanes Teacher, Charlotte Mitchell not only affected the educational life of the parish’s African-American community, but home life, as well. Over an eight-month period in 1932-1933, Charlotte Mitchell reported sixty visits to homes in addition to her seventy-five visits to schools. She led the Colored Home Demonstration Clubs in the parish and oversaw food canning centers in four of the parish’s African-American schools, allowing community members to put up thousands of tin cans of food each year. Many of the cans were set aside for the Red Cross to distribute to the hungry.
Charlotte Mitchell retired as Bossier Parish’s Jeanes Supervisor in 1937. She continued to teach for at least four more years at the Bossier Parish Training School where she still lived at the campus. Oliver Mitchell passed away in 1939. Charlotte Mitchell died in 1948 at the age of sixty-eight. However, Charlotte Mitchell’s name has endured. In 1954, the Bossier Parish School Board renamed the Bossier City Colored High School to Charlotte Mitchell High School. It is now known as Mitchell Community Center, with an adjoining Mitchell Park. The building, on Cox Street in “Old Bossier”, is used for youth and food bank programs by the Bossier Parish Sheriff’s Office. In 2017 the Charlotte Mitchell High School class of 1969, the last to graduate in the school, dedicated “Charlotte Ann Mitchell Memorial Drive” with a large and visible sign on Cox Street, honoring Charlotte Mitchell almost 70 years after her passing.
Visit the History Center in the Bossier Parish Central Library Complex for more information on the Jeanes Teachers or other local women for March, Women’s History Month. We are located in the Bossier Central Library Complex at 7204 Hutchison Drive in Bossier City, LA. 2206 Beckett St, Bossier City, LA. Or, go online to our collections database and search for “Catalogs” at http://bossier.pastperfectonline.com/ The History Center is open: M-Fri 9-6. Saturdays we are open by appointment. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org For other local history events, facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, or check out our blog at http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.
Images:
- Portrait of Charlotte A. Mitchell 1999.130.001
- Bossier Parish Training School (AKA C.H. Irion HS) in Benton, La. (Cover of Reunion Booklet 1986, Collection of BPL History Center)
- Charlotte Mitchell High School (AKA Bossier Colored HS) in Bossier City, La. 2013.016.001
Article by: Pam Carlisle
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