John W. Mitchell, Noted Extension Farm Leader, Dies, 1955

From the February, 1955, issue of Extension Farm-News, published by the Agricultural Extension Service at N.C. State College, Raleigh

Noted Negro Farm Leader Dies

John W. Mitchell, a North Carolinian who became a top government man in teaching Negro farm people, has died at the age of 69.

He was one of the only three Negroes to be honored by Progressive Farmer magazine as Man of the Year in Southern agriculture.

The native of Morehead City who rose to field supervisor of Negro extension work in the South, died January 7 at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

Funeral services for the graduate of Fayetteville State Teachers College were held in Fayetteville where he was reared and where in 1910 he organized Cumberland County’s first Negro rural high school. For six years after graduation, he was assistant to the president of the Fayetteville College.

In 1917 he began his government service as an extension agent, teaching farm people who they could improve their living conditions by such things as developing year-round gardens and keeping chickens, hogs, or a cow or two. He covered three counties—Bladen, Columbus, and Pasquotank—on a bicycle in good weather, on horseback in bad weather.