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.

Thanks to our partner Mitchell Community College, we now have several additional scrapbooks about the school from 1929-1947. The scrapbooks primarily contain newspaper clippings from community papers, including the Charlotte Observer, the Statesville Daily, and the Winston-Salem Journal. 

This batch also contains a few miscellaneous items from MCC from the 1970s, including alumni newsletters and a feature in the Statesville Record & Landmark Bicentennial Edition. 

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. 

The MCC choir, 1939

To see more from Mitchell Community College, take a look at their partner page or their website. You can also view the full collections of MCC scrapbooks and alumni newsletters.