December 22, 1883

U.S. Rep. Arthur Wergs Mitchell, the first black member of Congress to serve as a Democrat, was born in Roanoke. Mitchell studied a year each at the Tuskegee Institute and the Snow Hill Institute in Wilcox County before opening several schools for African-Americans in the Black Belt. Mitchell’s schools, however, all quickly closed or burned, and he fled the state to avoid several lawsuits for defrauding poor blacks. As a U.S. representative from Chicago, he proved valuable to his party by recruiting blacks away from the Republican Party as he promoted the idea that African-Americans in the South were more fortunate than those in the North.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Chambers County native Arthur Wergs Mitchell (1883-1968) was a controversial figure who promoted education in rural parts of the state while at the same time defrauding parents and business partners for labor and money. After leaving Alabama to escape fraud charges, he entered into a successful political career in Chicago. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Library of Congress)

Interior view of library reading room at the Tuskegee Institute, c. 1902. (Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

Snow Hill Institute near Snow Hill, Wilcox County, 2009. (Altairisfar; Wikipedia)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.