MARGARET MITCHELL Mitchell’s nephew Eugene Mitchell, who had inherited his aunt’s compassion for those less fortunate than herself, donated $1.5 million to Morehouse to establish a Margaret Mitchell Endowed Chair in the humanities and social sciences. The donation is one of the largest individual gifts in the College’s history. And in 2005, Eugene Mitchell donated another $1.5 million to the Morehouse School of Medicine, which had become an independently chartered institution. It became separate from Morehouse College in 1981. “Mays and Mitchell are dead,” Johnson reflected, “but their legacy lives on.” M
Morehouse alumnus Ira Joe Johnson ’73 (pictured below) and co-author William Pickens wrote about Mitchell’s contributions to Morehouse in the 1996 book, “Benjamin E. Mays and Margaret Mitchell: A Unique Legacy in Medicine.” Johnson was writing a book to celebrate Dr. Benjamin Mays’ 100th birthday when he came across letters that mentioned Mitchell giving money for student scholarships.
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When he stepped foot on campus in 1940, that was a time when Morehouse was very poor, so Mays was reaching out to people to underwrite scholarships. He wrote a letter to ask her to donate to the school. She didn’t answer the first or second letters; her husband, John Marsh, wrote back on her behalf.” — IRA JOE JOHNSON
special anniversary issue • morehouse magazine
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