A Noble and Independent Course: The Life of the Reverend Edward Mitchell

In 1828 Edward Mitchell was the first student of African descent to graduate from Dartmouth College, more than thirty-five years before any other Ivy League school admitted a black student. This book tells his life story with the help of a recently rediscovered trove of college essays by Mitchell, notes on his religious conversion, and his sermons.

The Dartmouth Trustees initially denied Mitchell admission but yielded to unified student protest, “to the honor of human nature be it said.” Born and raised in the French slave colony of Martinique, Mitchell immigrated to the United States and came of age in Philadelphia, where he broke bread with the city’s African American clerics and civic leaders. After college, he continued his northward journey to serve as a Baptist preacher and evangelist in the pulpits of northern New England. His religious odyssey concluded in Lower Canada, where he was remembered as “the most profound theologian ever settled.” During his travels throughout the Atlantic world in an age of revolution and religious revival, he encountered the dominant social, political, economic, and political realities of his time.

Although long celebrated as the inspiration for Dartmouth’s legacy in educating men and women of African ancestry, Mitchell’s life story remained unknown for almost two centuries. This book, which embodies history as recovery, is a testament to the authors’ desire to know the man behind the story.