User:Ethnicstudies101
Lucy Miller Mitchell[edit]
Lucy Miller Mitchell was a noted educator and the first African American woman to be elected on the national board of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA). Lucy miller Mitchell was a pioneer for Black women to get involved in the education system and was instrumental in the starting of the head start program.
Early Life[edit]
Lucy Miller Mitchell, nee Lucy Miller, was born to Laura Clayton Miller in 1899 in Daytona Beach, Florida her father unnamed was a successful businessman and although her parents were divorced she kept a relationship with both. She attended Mary McLeod Bethune’s Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute from kindergarten through high school. Upon graduation from high school, Lucy attended Talladega College where she graduated with honors in 1922 with a Bachelor of Science degree. Miller then returned to the Daytona School where she taught for a year. Although Bethune and the trustees of the school wished to pass the "mantle of leadership" from Bethune to Miller, Miller instead chose to marry Joseph Mitchell, a graduate of Harvard university and Boston university law schools, and moved with him to Boston, Massachusetts. The couple had 2 children Laura Mitchell Holland (1924-2006) and Joseph S. Mitchell, Jr (1926-2004).
Career[edit]
Mitchel was the first African-American woman to be elected to on the national board of the YWCA as a board member, she chaired the public affairs committee for seven years. Her work helped African American women to gain resources and to fight segregation within YWCA club groups, craft groups, and gym programs.
Furthermore, Lucy Miller Mitchell devoted close to fifty years to improving standards of childcare and education in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In 1927, when registering her eldest child for admission to Ruggles Street Nursery School and Training Center, she met Abigail A. Eliot, a pioneer in nursery education. With Eliot’s encouragement, Mitchell volunteered at and later enrolled in courses at the Nursery Training School. She received certification in 1934, and was awarded a master's degree in early childhood education from Boston University in 1935.
Mitchell worked as director of the nursery school at Robert Gould Shaw House from 1932 to 1953. There she developed a model of schooling in which many students were sent for fieldwork and practice teaching. Mitchell also served as a member of the structuring committee of Associated Day Care Services of Metropolitan Boston and later became its educational director and acting executive director. In 1953, the governor of Massachusetts appointed Mitchell to a special commission to study the licensing of day care agencies. As a result of her decade long efforts, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed day care licensing legislation in 1963. Subsequently, she worked with the Massachusetts Department of Education in designing low-cost extension courses for day care workers.
Legacy[edit]
In addition to her work with the Associated Day Care Services and the YWCA, Miller trained Peace Corps volunteers to work with children, consulted for the National Head Start program, and helped launch and implement local Boston early childhood programs. She was also a board member of such organizations as United Community Services of Metropolitan Boston, the Boston YWCA, Family Service Association of Greater Boston, Boston Center for Adult Education, and Fort Hill Mental Health Association. She served as president of the Boston Association of Nursery Education and was among a small group that helped Muriel Snowden and her husband Otto Snowden establish Freedom House, an organization devoted to serving the Roxbury community. Later in her life she also dedicated her energy to aging and senior citizen issues. She was also a member of several African American women’s organizations including Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated and The Links, Incorporated.
After a life devoted to social welfare and improving standards for group care of young children, Lucy Miller Mitchell died in 2002.
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- ^ Cochrane, Sharlene Voogd (1991) "Compelled to Speak: Women Confronting Institutional Racism, 1910-1950," New England Journal of Public Policy: Vol. 7: Iss. 2, Article 4.
- ^ Crawford, Vicki L. (1990) “Women in the Civil Rights Movement,” Indiana University Press. Paper.
- ^ Hanson, Joyce A. (2003) “Mary McLeod Bethune & Black Women’s Activism,” university of Missouri press. Paper
- ^ Hill, Ruth Edmonds. The Black Women Oral History Project: From the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe College. Westport, CT: Meckler, 1991. Print.
- ^ Lucy Miller Mitchell Papers, 1919-1988; item description, dates. MC 812, folder #. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.