HomeMy WebLinkAboutMitchellTHE DESIGNATION OF HARVEY MITCHELL PARKWAY
by Dale Baum
Brazos County finally has a major parkway crossing Texas Avenue named after a "scalawag." Exactly
132 years after Harvey Mitchell infuriated the majority of local whites by assisting occupying
"Yankee" troops in registering former slaves to vote, the Brazos County Commissioner's Court voted to
name roughly 15 miles of F.M. 2818 after him. (The designation of Harvey Mitchell Parkway had pre-
viously been approved by the Texas Department of Transportation and by both the cities of Bryan and
College Station.) The Bryan-College Station Eagle reported this exciting story (Eagle, July 7, 1999, p.
A12), but then characteristically botched it up by immediately issuing unnecessary "corrections" to
what it initially had printed. The story of Mitchell's real significance to our community was thus once
again on the verge of being lost and forgotten.
The betrayal of our local history is nothing new, and the historical amnesia regarding Mitchell's
accomplishments, including his role as a federal voter registrar after the Civil War, cannot be laid
solely at the door of the Eagle. Even those who courageously struggled in 1992 to commemorate this
honorable man failed to explain the larger context surrounding the reasons for why so little had been
done previously to honor him. Mitchell's legacy is important enough to be told honestly and truthfully.
To understand the man and the scope of his accomplishments, we must discard the old racist myths
regarding the period of Reconstruction following the Civil War.
Mitchell, an early and long time Brazos County resident who served as county judge from 1851 to
1854, was unquestionably (and in spite of the Eagle's retractions) "The Father of Brazos County." [See,
for example, the Eagle's front-page coverage of the Brazos Heritage Society's decision to honor Mitch-
ell in the Spring of 1992 (Apri16, 1992, p. 1) or take a stroll on TAMU's Military Walk by the Beutel
Health Center and read the dedication marker honoring him which was erected on April 12, 1992, by
the University, the Heritage Society, and the Masonic Grand Lodge.] Moreover, Mitchell's greatest
local contribution was his support for the forward looking, but at the time extremely controversial, leg-
islation needed to meet the deadline after the Civil War for allowing Texas to take advantage of the
federal Morrill Land Grant College Act. By working tirelessly with local area Republican party politi-
cians, including former slaves and "carpetbagger" state legislator Charles W. Gardiner of Bryan, Mitch-
ell won for Brazos County in the summer of 1871 the location of the Agricultural and Mechanical
College of Texas. At one crucial point he pledged hundreds of acres of his own land as a donation to
the college for its possible location in Brazos County. But for Mitchell's actions, it is a safe bet that
College Station would never have appeared on the map, and Brazos County would have probably
developed along the lines of neighboring Robertson County.
At the time of the college's establishment by the Texas Legislature in April of 1871 and its location
the same year in Brazos County (the college did not open its doors for students until 1876), most Texas
Democrats claimed that this first venture by their state into higher education would result in a "grand
swindle" because only "carpet-bag heroes" would secure positions in the "A. and M. College." More-
over, virtually all Democrats were dismayed that the acceptance of the "Yankee-inspired" legislation
dictated the creation, if state officials decided to segregate white from black students, of another feder-
ally supported land-grant school for blacks (which subsequently became Prairie View Normal and
Industrial College). Because of his endorsement of higher educational opportunities for ex-slaves, the
majority of whites associated Mitchell with other, in the common parlance of the day, "radical" and
dangerous "traitors to their race." [See the Austin Tri-Weekly Statesman, May 28, 1872, and Semi-
Weekly Brenham Banner, August 4, 1871.]
To his everlasting credit, Harvey Mitchell was among the few courageous white Texans who
immediately after the Civil War tried to build a fair and just biracial society on the ashes of slavery. Let
us thus celebrate with pride the designation that began in August of this year of "Harvey Mitchell
Parkway."