(1889–1975), mother of Juanita Jackson Mitchell and mother-in-law of Clarence Mitchell Jr.; president, Baltimore NAACP branch (1935–70). In 1931, she assisted Juanita in organizing the City-Wide Young People’s Forum, an organization for social education, uplift, and protest. Her organizing of a “Buy Where You Can Work” boycott of A&P food stores in Baltimore in 1935 brought her to the attention of Carl Murphy, publisher of the Baltimore Afro-American, who asked her to become chair of the reorganizing committee of the local NAACP. She then led a successful membership drive and later organized the Maryland NAACP State Conference of Branches. She also became a member of the NAACP National Board of Directors. Under her leadership and in conjunction with Juanita, who became a lawyer, Maryland was desegregated by 1954. The Baltimore NAACP branch’s most significant contribution to this effort was its sponsorship in 1935 of Murray v. Maryland, which resulted that year in the desegregation of the University of Maryland Law School, the first in the series of cases that built to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.
