Charlene Alexander Mitchell (June 8, 1930 – December 14, 2022) was an American international socialist, feminist, labor and civil rights activist. In 1968, she became the first Black woman candidate for President of the United States.[1][2]
In the 1970s, she became a leader in efforts to support the defense of Angela Davis, founded the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, campaigned on behalf of the defenses of Joan Little and the Wilmington Ten, and focused her activism on anti-apartheid efforts.
She joined the Communist Party USA at the age of 16, and had joined the youth branch, the American Youth for Democracy, when she was 13.[1] Early activism by Mitchell in the 1940s included participation in a successful sit-in protest against segregated seating in a theater, with white students sitting in the "colored only" balcony and Black students sitting in the "whites only" section below.[1][7]
In 1958, Mitchell joined the national committee of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).[1] Her 1959 testimony before a panel of the House Un-American Activities Committee received attention due to her refusals to answer questions and her challenge to the authority of the committee.[2] In Los Angeles, she founded the Che-Lumumba Club, an all-Black chapter of CPUSA, in the 1960s.[1][5]Angela Davis worked with Mitchell and the Che-Lumumba Club, including to organize protests.[1][8] Mitchell's brother and sister-in-law Franklin and Kendra Alexander were also active in the Che-Lumumba Club.[9] Mitchell moved to New York City in 1968.[1][2]
The Fight to Free Angela Davis by Charlene Mitchell (1972)
After Davis was arrested in 1970, Mitchell led efforts to support her defense.[1][2] Mitchell worked with Kendra and Franklin Alexander on the campaign to free Davis, including as an investigator for the National United Committee to Free Angela Davis and with a small team and Davis to coordinate political and legal defenses.[12][9]
According to Sol Stern at the New York Times in 1971, it was "the best-organized, most broad-based defense effort in the recent history of radical political trials--more potent that that afforded to any of the Panther leaders or the Chicago Seven."[9] Davis later described the effort as "one of the most impressive mass international campaigns of the 20th century" and said about Mitchell, "I have never known anyone as consistent in her values, as collective in her outlook on life, as firm in her trajectory as a freedom fighter."[7]
After the acquittal of Davis in 1972, Mitchell founded the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, with a focus on police brutality and the legal system.[1][2] Mitchell also campaigned on behalf of the defenses of Joan Little and the Wilmington Ten.[5][2]
Mitchell began to focus on anti-apartheid efforts in the 1970s, and visited Nelson Mandela in South Africa after his release from prison in 1990.[2]Benjamin Chavis has said that in the 1980s, James Baldwin referred to Mitchell as "the Joan of Arc of Harlem" because "she dares to utter unspeakable truth to power."[2]
After the death of prominent CPUSA member Henry Winston in 1986, Mitchell and other party members questioned the direction of the party.[2] They planned a reform movement and matters came to a head at a convention in December 1991. Many who signed a letter urging reform were purged by Gus Hall from the CPUSA's national committee, including Mitchell, Angela Davis, Kendra Alexander and other African-American leaders.[14] Others who left the Party then included Herbert Aptheker, Gil Green, and Michael Myerson.[15]
Mitchell married Bill Mitchell in 1950 and they had a son in 1951.[5] After their divorce, she married Michael Welch and they later divorced.[1] In 2007, she experienced a stroke.[5][1] Mitchell died in New York City’s Amsterdam Nursing Home on December 14, 2022, at the age of 92.[18]
^ abc"Black Women and the Radical Tradition Conference 2009: Angela Davis Tribute to Charlene Mitchell, Introductory comments by Gena Rae Mcneil". Vimeo. Graduate Center for Worker Education of Brooklyn College. 2009. Retrieved 24 December 2022. ...at age 7 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Charlene's mother's illness necessitated that Charlene take several busses for one of the scariest trips on which she had ever been thus far in her life. She was on her way to the Federal jail to visit her labor-activist father. After a long ride with several transfers, she arrived so late at the Federal jail that the guards deemed it too late for her to really have any kind of visit. Technically, at the time of her arrival, visiting hours were not over, and Charlene at age 7 argued the point, protesting the guards' decision which, if implemented, would have prevented her from visiting her father and delivering a basket of items her mother had entrusted to her for him. Through what she remembers and describes as "hollering and demanding", she managed to persuade the armed guard to let her go up in the jail elevator at the very end of visiting hours then, and after she "hollered" some more, she persuaded the guard that visiting her father with the glass between them was completely unacceptable, and made it impossible for her to deliver the basket. The guards held the basket and let her go into the room where there were table visits permitted providing visitors remained on their side of the table. As soon as Charlene's father came out and sat down, Charlene jumped around the table and sat on his lap. The guards threw up their hands, but she was not finished yet. She kept talking to them about the basket, telling the guards they could not go away with her father's basket, until they finally agreed that her father could see the basket before they took it back for inspection. In their very next conversation Charlene's mother and father had, Charlene's father told her mother 'never let Charlene come again'. It was too hard on him and the jailers would never get over it.
