N.C. A&T Alumni Times

John W. Mitchell Drive is a long street in the heart of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University’s campus, between Laurel Street and Benbow Road. It is where Aggies will find the new Student Union, Cooper Hall, the Aggie Villages, Corbett Gym, Moore Gym, the Aggie Dome, Haley Hall and Campbell Hall. Countless parades, sorority and fraternity probates, graduations, and concerts have taken place on this road for decades. Many alumni today may not know anything about its namesake and why John W. Mitchell was honored with one of the most travelled streets in Aggieland.

John William Mitchell (1885 – 1955) was a 1909 graduate of the Agricultural and Mechanical College for The Colored Race (now North Carolina A&T) who became a pioneering leader in the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service, and later for the United States Department of Agriculture. At one time he was seen as the nation’s most significant person of color in agriculture, second only to George Washington Carver.

After earning his bachelor’s degree in agriculture, Mitchell was an assistant principal at the State Colored Normal School (now Fayetteville State University) and a principal for a Rosenwald School in Aberdeen, North Carolina. He became a N.C. extension agent in 1917 for Bladen, Columbus and Pasquotank counties to improve the living conditions of farm families by teaching best agricultural practices. This required commuting from county to county through dirt roads, by horse or bicycle, sometimes spending nights with farm families. In 1924, he was appointed to the new service district office on A&T’s campus where he would direct the extension activities for 15 counties. Among his accomplishments in this role, he built one of the largest Negro 4-H Clubs for youth in the nation. He became the state agent in charge of extension work for African Americans in N.C. in 1940.

At N.C. A&T, he worked with many of the south’s greatest men and women of agriculture and vocational education like Robert E. Jones (R. E. Jones Drive), John D. Wray, Dazelle Foster Lowe, S. B. Simmons, and Dean John McLaughlin. A&T was also a family affair for the Mitchell clan. At least two of his children, Rivera and Talmadge attended A&T. His wife Lena Mae was a student in the A&T extension’s Greensboro Center.

Mitchell was well known for his multiple roles as chair, director, or secretary for national and regional agricultural conferences. He was also known for his financial and innovative leadership in the lives of the state’s African-American farmers, and academic and community efforts between the races in the North Carolina Commission on Inter-Racial Cooperation.

In 1943, Mitchell left A&T when he became a field agent for the United States Extension Service to represent 17 Southeastern states. Livingstone College awarded him an honorary degree of Doctor of Humanities in 1950 for his work in improving the rural life of farmers in the South. In 1953, USDA Secretary Ezra Taft Benson appointed him to the specially created post of National Extension Leader on the Division of the Department of Cooperative Extension Work. This was the highest rank ever given to a person of color within the national extension organization.

Mitchell was still serving in the USDA when he passed away on January 8, 1955, at the age of 69. He is still recognized as one of A&T’s most outstanding agriculture alumnus and was inducted into the N.C. A&T School of Agriculture Hall of Fame in 1996. John W. Mitchell Drive on A&T’s Campus was dedicated in the 1975-76 academic year. In addition, during the 2014 centennial celebration for the cooperative extension he was remembered as one of five key pioneers of the N.C. A&T Cooperative Extension program.