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Girlhood on Jackson Hill[edit]
Little Jimmy (1905) by Jimmy Swinnerton
In an accident that was traumatic for her mother although she was unharmed, when Mitchell was about three years old, her dress caught fire on an iron grate. Fearing it would happen again, her mother began dressing her in boys' pants, and she was nicknamed "Jimmy", the name of a character in the comic strip, Little Jimmy.[20] Her brother insisted she would have to be a boy named Jimmy to play with him. Having no sisters to play with, Mitchell said she was a boy named Jimmy until she was fourteen.[18]:27–28
Stephens Mitchell said his sister was a tomboy who would happily play with dolls occasionally, and she liked to ride her Texas plains pony.[21] As a little girl, Mitchell went riding every afternoon with a Confederate veteran and a young lady of "beau-age".[22] She was raised in an era when children were "seen and not heard" and was not allowed to express her personality by running and screaming on Sunday afternoons while her family was visiting relatives.[23] Mitchell learned the gritty details of specific battles from these visits with aging Confederate soldiers. But she didn't learn that the South had actually lost the war until she was 10 years of age: "I heard everything in the world except that the Confederates lost the war. When I was ten years old, it was a violent shock to learn that General Lee had been defeated. I didn't believe it when I first heard it and I was indignant. I still find it hard to believe, so strong are childhood impressions." [24] Her mother would swat her with a hairbrush or a slipper as a form of discipline.[21][17]:413
May Belle Mitchell was "hissing blood-curdling threats" to her daughter to make her behave the evening she took her to a women's suffrage rally led by Carrie Chapman Catt.[17]:56 Her daughter sat on a platform wearing a Votes-for-Women banner, blowing kisses to the gentlemen, while her mother gave an impassioned speech.[25][26] She was nineteen years old when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, which gave women the right to vote.
May Belle Mitchell was president of the Atlanta Woman's Suffrage League (1915), chairwoman of press publicity for the Georgia Mothers' Congress and Parent Teacher Association, a member of the Pioneer Society, the Atlanta Woman's Club, and several church and literary societies.[27]
Mitchell's father was not in favor of corporal punishment in school. During his tenure as president of the educational board (1911–1912),[28] corporal punishment in the public schools was abolished. Reportedly, Eugene Mitchell received a whipping on the first day he attended school and the mental impression of the thrashing lasted far longer than the physical marks.[29]
Jackson Hill was an old, affluent part of the city.[25] At the bottom of Jackson Hill was an area of African American homes and businesses called "Darktown". The mayhem of the Atlanta Race Riot occurred over four days in September 1906 when Mitchell was five years old.[30] Local newspapers alleged that several white women had been assaulted by black men,[31] prompting an angry mob of 10,000 to assemble in the streets.
Eugene Mitchell went to bed early the night the rioting began, but was awakened by the sounds of gunshots. The following morning, as he later wrote, to his wife, he learned "16 negroes had been killed and a multitude had been injured" and that rioters "killed or tried to kill every Negro they saw." As the rioting continued, rumors ran wild that Negroes would burn Jackson Hill.[30] At his daughter's suggestion, Eugene Mitchell, who did not own a gun, stood guard with a sword.[32] Though she and her family were unharmed, Mitchell recalled twenty years later the terror she felt during the riot.[17]:41 Mitchell grew up in a Southern culture where the fear of black on white rape incited mob violence, and in this world, white Georgians lived in fear of the "black beast rapist".[33]
Stereoscope card showing the business district on Peachtree Street ca. 1907. The Mitchells' new home was about 3 miles from here.[34]
Soon after the riot, the Mitchell family decided to move away from Jackson Hill.[17]:69 In 1912, they moved to the east side of Peachtree Street just north of Seventeenth Street in Atlanta. Past the nearest neighbor's house was forest and beyond it the Chattahoochee River.[35] Mitchell's former Jackson Hill home was destroyed in the Great Atlanta Fire of 1917.[36]:xxiii
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