Journey through time by looking at our latest batch of materials from Mitchell Community College. Thanks to our partners, Mitchell Community College, you can now view 10 news scrapbooks. The scrapbooks are composed of newspaper clippings containing announcements about the lives and achievements of students as well as events taking place in the community at large during the 1950’s-1970’s. Visit DigtalNC to take a look at the Mitchell Community College newspaper clipping scrapbooks.
Like in the previous batch, these scrapbooks focus on newspaper clippings from a variety of local papers that ran news about Mitchell. For example, in 1935, The Statesville Record ran a full page honoring the 26 graduates, which lists their names and photos in yearbook style. The accompanying article notes that Mary Logan King was awarded a “ten-dollar gold piece” for typing. Her typing speed was apparently 72 words per minute, which is still impressive by today’s standards—and then you remember she was doing it on a typewriter.
As a prequel to the praise of Mitchell’s traveling choir in 1939, there is also news of Davidson College’s glee club visiting to perform. According to the news bulletin accompanying the photo, “The Davidson College Glee club is well known all over the state and a large crowd is expected to attend the concert.” It sounds like the MCC choir had a little bit of musical competition.
The elected campus leaders for Mitchell Community College 1938-1939. In back, left to right: Betsy Gilliam, Nancy Sloop, and Helene Solomon. Front row, left to right: Martha Dotson (standing), Eleanor Bonner, and Dorothy Cutting. One person is unidentified.
Most of the newspaper clippings celebrate the notable happenings at the school or accomplishments of its students, such as the performance of the basketball team or the presentation of a commencement speaker. A few mark historic moments for the school, such as when W. B. Ramsey, president of the school for 14 years, resigned her post for its “strain of duties of this exacting and responsible office—always taxing on her health.”
One topic that comes up frequently in these scrapbooks is the Mitchell Community College A Cappella choir, which performed in “a dozen or more cities” in North Carolina (according to the Statesville Daily in May 1939). The Charlotte Observer called it “one of the outstanding musical organizations in the state” in an article from January 8, 1939.
Thanks to our partner, Mitchell Community College, we have 54 new course catalogs for Mitchell Community College spanning from 1942 to 2011 available on our website—filling in previously missing years.
Chartered in 1852, Mitchell Community College began as a Presbyterian college for women with a focus on fine arts and music. It changed to a junior women’s college in 1924. In 1932, following the growing hardships caused by the Great Depression, men were allowed onto the campus. Twenty-seven years later, in 1959, another change occurred when the college became an independent community college operated by the Mitchell College Foundation. Since 1852, the college has continued to be updated with new programs, buildings, and classes to suit the changing times and various education paths of its community.
Mitchell Community College 1987-1989 Course Catalog
To learn more about Mitchell Community College, please visit their website.
To view more of our materials from North Carolina community colleges, visit here.
A new batch of materials from our partner Mitchell Community College is now on DigitalNC. The most exciting items in the batch were almost 20 glass plate negatives taken in February 1925, likely for that year’s yearbook. There is no known copy of the yearbook still in existence from that year, so it’s a particularly exciting set. The photographs feature fabulous 1920s styles on the students of Mitchell College, which was an all women’s school in the 1920s. Group portraits, classroom photos, and staged production photographs are all included.
In addition to the negatives, scrapbooks from Mitchell Community College student government and the Statesville Junior Women’s Club are included, as are some issues of the student newspaper and alumni materials.
We’re happy to share a new batch of photographs from Mitchell Community College, located in Statesville, North Carolina. This batch includes seven photos from the Women’s History Month kickoff event with Emily Herring Wilson and related Women of Mitchell historical exhibit.
Several photos are of Wilson’s talk held at the Rotary Auditorium in the J.P. and Mildred Huskins Library. Wilson spoke about her book North Carolina Women: Making History, focusing on Mitchell’s history and women’s contributions. The remaining photos are of the related exhibit consisting of memorabilia highlighting women employees of Mitchell.
Notably, Wilson’s talk was held on March 2, 2020, right before the COVID-19 pandemic cancelled campus gatherings and the rest of the in-person Women’s History Month events. Later in the year, Mitchell held a new, online event for Women’s Equality Day, The Women in Leadership Panel, which is available to view on DigitalNC.
To view all digitized materials from Mitchell Community College, click here. And to learn more about Mitchell, please visit their website here.
DigitalNC has a hit a new milestone – a virtual panel held during the COVID era is now part of the NCDHC collection, thanks to our partner Mitchell Community College.
From the Google form used to sign up to attend the virtual panel
Recorded using the software Blackboard Collaborate, the panel hosted by the community college library featured four Iredell County women Dr. Porter Brannon, Dr. Camille Reese, Sara Haire Tice, and Dorothy Woodard, who answered questions about what inspires them, how they overcame obstacles along their career paths, and more. You can watch the panel yourself here.
To view more materials from Mitchell Community College, view their partner page here. To view more audiovisual materials on DigitalNC, visit our collection North Carolina Sights and Sounds.
Thanks to our partner, Mitchell Community College, we now have a new batch of catalogs, presidential reports, event programs and other ephemera spanning the years 1943-2011.
A brochure for Mitchell College and Academy from June 1934.
Mitchell Community College began as Concord Presbyterian Female College, chartered in 1852 in downtown Statesville, North Carolina. In 1917, its name was changed to Mitchell College and in 1924 it became a junior women’s college. However, because the Great Depression brought fewer opportunities for local men to receive a college education, Mitchell College became co-educational in 1932. In 1973, Mitchell College was incorporated into the North Carolina Community College System and became known as it is known today as Mitchell Community College. They now have two locations: one in Statesville and one in Mooresville, North Carolina.
A 1990 program for the Miss Mitchell Pageant, an annual pageant that was held at Mitchell Community College.
You can view all of the materials we’ve digitized for Mitchell Community College on their contributor page. For more information about this partner, check out their website.
Student yearbooks from Mitchell Community College are now available in the North Carolina College and University Yearbooks collection on DigitalNC. The college traces its history back to 1852, when a Presbyterian college for women was established in Statesville. The college has grown and changed significantly over the years, joining the North Carolina Community College system in 1959.
There are 68 yearbooks available online, the earliest from 1908 when the school was known as Statesville Female College.
This blog is maintained by the staff of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center and features the latest news and highlights from the collections at DigitalNC, an online library of primary sources from organizations across North Carolina.
