Thread by @ar_holter

it was at exactly this time of the year 80 years ago, in 1939, when @JohnsHopkins made national news for an interesting reason: a white professor resigned over the administration's refusal to admit a Black student.

(warning: twitter pedantry to follow...)

the student was Edward Shakespear Lewis, 36 yrs old & head of the Urban League in Baltimore, a major figure in the struggle to secure rights & protections for Black people here during the Depression, especially in employment. he applied as a grad student in political economy

Lewis was also one of the organizers (along with Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP) of the largest anti-fascist demonstration to ever happen in Baltimore, when the Nazi cruiser Emden visited Fells Point to much civic fanfare in April 1936 (2nd pic is the protest)

the professor meanwhile was no ordinary professor. a southerner who despised the south & a Hopkins alum who hated Hopkins (at least its leadership), Broadus Mitchell was the most popular prof w/students at JHU and had next to no friends on the faculty. he started shit constantly

"a chronic dissenter," in the Sun's words, Mitchell believed that academics had a crucial role to play public affairs and in shaping policy, and he constantly challenged received ideas about *who* and *what* a university education was for

case in point, Mitchell ran for governor of Maryland on the Socialist ticket more than once in the 30s "as a means of discussing economics with the whole state and as a means of extending the work of the political economy class-room."

Mitchell's frequent partner-in-crime in the Socialist party in those years was Elisabeth Gilman, daughter of the 1st president of Johns Hopkins. she also ran for governor, senator, mayor of Baltimore, and even sheriff. (she was also a dog mom!)

Mitchell took his students on field trips around Baltimore to places like the infamous Lung Block, a focus of Edward S. Lewis's Urban League so-called for its TB rates. it was the 1st exposure many of Mitchell's white, male, wealthy pupils had with poverty in their own backyard

Mitchell tried to take his class to the Bachelors Cotillon, a debutante ball and "manifestation of 'our economic system, just as the slums... are'" but the organizers wouldn't let them in. the media attention caused the Cotillon to be cancelled for the rest of the Depression

Mitchell also wrangled classroom space from JHU for the Baltimore Labor College, a night school for workers (mostly women) created through a partnership of academics and trade unions; "a great university should aid in every way the leaders of a submerged class," he wrote

Adelaide Hammond, Mitchell's wife at the time, played no games, either. here she is moments before her arrest for picketing cuts to relief aid in 1934. (Mitchell was such a disagreeable jackass that she divorced him two years after this)

among many social justice campaigns, Mitchell was part of a probe to investigate the lynching of Matthew Williams in Salisbury MD, Dec. 1931. what's notable is that he condemned not only the backwardness of the Eastern Shore (safe enough to do from the other side of the bay)...

...but also the Governor and Attny General of MD for not holding anyone accountable. the lynching was not just mob violence, he argued, it was a massive failure of the state that implicated Annapolis and "respectable" white Marylanders too

for this, Hopkins vigorously distanced itself from Broadus Mitchell. President Joseph Ames rebuked him in the Salisbury newspaper and a former US senator took him to task in the Baltimore Sun. Mitchell didn't apologize. "Officials who allow [lynching] should be impeached."

about JHU's response to its professor's condemnation of lynching, the editors of the Baltimore Afro American commented:

"There is little at anti-Negro Johns Hopkins for which colored people can thank God."

back to 1939 now: Edward S. Lewis's application to the graduate school went unread for months upon months. Mitchell was his only advocate on the faculty; grad students favored Lewis's admission. still, the administration refused to budge

"'Hopkins has a fine motto,' [Mitchell] said. 'Veritas vos liberabit. Translated, this means the truth will make you free, but, should it not read the truth will make you free if you have a white face and $450.00?'"

as Danton Rodriguez explains in a JHU undergrad paper about this, Hopkins President Isaiah Bowman basically started trying to squeeze Mitchell out & eventually they had a meeting in which Mitchell lost his temper (as usual) and resigned. Edward S. Lewis's application was denied.

Lewis's application was judged to entirely meet the requirements of admission according to the department. Rodriguez notes that in private correspondence shortly after this President Bowman identified Lewis as "a troublemaker in this town"

Lewis stayed on in a Baltimore a little while longer before beginning a long and admired tenure as the head the Urban League in New York City. he eventually took a doctorate from New York University

"It is the regret of my life that at Johns Hopkins University I did not pursue to the bitter end the defense of the proposal to admit a qualified Negro graduate student in the Department of Political Economy," Mitchell told an interviewer many years later

when Mitchell died in 1988 at the age of 95, Dr. G. James Fleming of Morgan State called it a "reminder, happily, that there has always been a handful of white Marylanders, even in darker times, who stood for justice and fair play and equal opportunity for all"

can't help but add that some of Mitchell's students went on to do halfway decent things, like the Pulitzer-winning reporter Murray Kempton (seen here in the late 50s/early 60s w/Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin & Autherine Lucy, and in 1938). Alger Hiss was too, but that's another story

for more see Danton Rodriguez's fantastic undergrad fantastic research paper available here:
afam.nts.jhu.edu/people/lewis/l…

(three cheers for undergrad research!)

and also this oral history with Broadus Mitchell, where you can actually hear him discuss this:

docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/B-0024/me…

one last thing: the "shack" Mitchell built for himself in his rich Baltimore neighborhood was so offensive to his neighbors that they tried to file suit to get it torn down, and Broadus Mitchell of course did not give a shit. and he got to keep it.

extremely recommended too: "The Strange Career of American Liberalism" by *current* JHU professor of history and @RicJhu Director @ndbconnolly in the new 'Shaped by the State'. Mitchell, Lewis et al were up against the New Deal's "Jim Crow liberalism"

press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book…