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Alexsandra Mitchell
Born	Alexandra Michell Mitchell
Title	Archivist Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture New York Public Library
Website	www.nypl.org/blog/author/2585

Alexsandra Mitchell (née Alexandra Michell Mitchell; born Philadelphia) is an American research librarian and archivist. As of 2015, has been an archivist at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library where she and other colleagues specialize in, among other things, archival research relating to African diaspora.

Selected publications

• "Black Student Nurses Around the World," by Alexsandra Mitchell, National Institutes of Health, Office of Extramural Research, February 18, 2014; OCLC 5708320339

“ In the 1940s and 50s, when the United Nations and the World Health Organization were new, an organization called the Helene Fuld Health Foundation, dedicated to the "relief of poverty, suffering, sickness and distress," collected a series of photographs of student nurses from countries all over the world. In this period the nurses' uniform was an important symbol of the professionalization of nursing and the nurses' commitment to humanitarian values. ” — Excerpt from Mitchell's work, "Black Student Nurses Around the World" 

• "At the Intersection: ICTs, Communities of Practice, Cultural Collaboration, and Political Engagement in a Globalized World" (workshop)

Lanisa S. Kitchiner (National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institute)

Alexsandra Mitchell (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library)

Marie-Aude Fouéré (Ecole des Hautes études en Sciences Sociales)

Léone Marin (Institut des mondes africains [fr])

Proceedings of the African Futures Conference, Volume 1, Issue 1, First published: June 2016, pps. 289–290; OCLC 7108788188

Innovation, Transformation, and Sustainable Futures in Africa; ISSN 2573-508X

Wiley Online Library: doi:10.1002/j.2573-508X.2016.tb00094.x

• (first book project, co-authored with fellow GSAS alumna Megan Goins-Diouf), as well as a children's book.

Formal education

• May 8, 2010, Bachelor of Arts degree, Howard University, College of Arts and Sciences, Division of Humanities, Social Sciences and Natural Sciences — among other things, Mitchell worked with the South African Research and Archival Project in the Moorland–Spingarn Research Center. Around 2009: Bachelors degree, Howard University. In 2009, while at Howard, Mitchell was Schomburg-Mellon Fellow. The program ran during the summers from 2005 to 2010 (6 years), selecting 10 fellows, nationally, per summer. The fellows, 60 in all, conducted research in the Schomburg divisions, looking for photographs, prints, manuscripts, and periodicals to illustrate Africana Age.

• Fall 2009: After graduating from Howard, Mitchell moved to Dakar, Senegal, for a year-long teaching fellowship at the Senegalese-American Bilingual School (French and English), a school founded in 1993 that offers both the Senegalese national baccalaureate and the American high school diploma program. The Schomburg Center, is 19 blocks north and one avenue east of Le Petit Senegal a small business community in Harlem on 116th Street between Lenox Avenue (Malcolm X Boulevard or Sixth Avenue) and Frederick Douglass Boulevard (Eighth Avenue).

• 2013: Dual Masters Degrees, began graduate school in 2011

1. Master of Arts, Africana Studies, New York University, Graduate School of Arts and Science. In 2013, Mitchell was a 1st Place Finalist in the Third Annual Threesis Academic Challenge, a showcase of academic excellence and important scholarly work of GSAS master's students. Mitchell had gave a presentation on the musical ties between the Afro-Cuban, Afro-Puerto Rican, and African American communities of New York City and Cuba between 1940 and 1960. (video)
2. Master of Library Science, Long Island University Palmer School of Library and Information Science

In December 2012, while in graduate school, Mitchell was among 10 recipients of a 2013 fellowship from the Association of Research Libraries with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for research internship at on of the following research libraries: (1) the University of Arizona, (2) Columbia University, (3) the University of Kentucky, (4) the National Library of Medicine, and (5) the University of Michigan. She did research in the the ARL's History of Medicine Division.

Other

• Post graduate: Schomburg-Mellon Summer Humanities Institute, a collaboration of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
• Former lecturer at New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study
• Recipient of the University of Virginia's Rare Book School IMLS Fellowship (2015). She took an intensive short-course at the Grolier Club titled "History of the Printed Book in the West Since 1800," taught by Eric Jon Holzenberg, director of the Grolier Club.
• National Diversity in Libraries Conference, sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries, Travel Award Winner (2016)
• Curator of the Schomburg Center's “Live From the Reading Room: Correspondence” podcast series and co-author of the forthcoming Research Techniques and Strategies for the Study of Black Writings, (Rowman & Littlefield)
• 2016: William T. Buice III Scholarship of the Rare Book School

Affiliations

• Member as of June 2012, Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York

Selected video and audio

• "When the Negro Was in Vogue: The Art of Collecting Black Culture" (video of live presentation), Alexsandra Mitchell (presenter), 27th Annual James A. Porter Colloquium on African American Art, Howard University, April 2016

• "Famous African-American Writers" (audio), Alexsandra Mitchell (guest), Ray Baker (host, sitting in for Roland Martin), The Roland Martin Show, Internet stream (retrieved September 15, 2017, via SoundCloud)

Family

Mitchell's one-hundred-and-three-year-old paternal grandmother, the Rev. Dr. Sadie S. Mitchell (EdD) (née Sadie Alberta Stridiron; born 1921) is a lifelong civic leader in Philadelphia. Mitchell became an ordained deacon in the Episcopal church in 1987 and a priest in 1988. In 1990, Mitchell earned a Master of Divinity, from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia and became an ordained Episcopal priest

1. Old Swedes Church (Christ Church), Upper Merion, serving as Pastor (1990)
2. Church of St. Luke and The Epiphany (1992), serving as Assistant to the Rector, the Reverend Canon Charles Luther Lewis Poindexter (1932–2014).
3. Associate Priest at the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia, is now retired. Before becoming a priest, the Rev. Dr. Mitchell had spent 39 years, from 1942 to 1981, as an educator in the Philadelphia public schools. Mitchell earned a Doctor of Education in 1978. She spent much of her career as an administrator, notably as:

• bio
• Principal of the Henry Longfellow Elementary School (1968)
• Principal of the Paul Lawrence Dunbar School (1970, 1972)
• Principal of Joseph C. Ferguson Elementary School (1973) (1980), which, in 1977, had 950 students.

In 1975, while working as a school administrator, she co-founded, with 4 other public school administrators, the Black Women's Educational Alliance in Philadelphia. The other 3 co-founders were (ii) Florence H. Scott, EdD, (iii) Gwendolyn Gates-Hewlett, EdD (née Gwendolyn Gates; 1928–1983), and (iv) Leontine Scott (née Leontine G. Dillon; 1928–2011), granddaughter of the African American artist, Frank Joseph Dillon (1856–1954), of Mount Holly, New Jersey. The organization, which endures today (as of 2024), was founded with 36 charter members.

Rev. Dr. Sadie S. Mitchell was baptized April 17, 1921, at the Church of the Crucifixion (Episcopal), in Philadelphia by the Rev. Robert H. Tabb. The Rev. Dr. Mitchell was part of a group of Philadelphia ministers, lawyers, and civic leaders who decried, on the basis of civil rights, the actions of Philadelphia law enforcement, who, as a means for evicting armed MOVE protesters who were holed up in fortified row houses in West Philadelphia, dropped a bomb on one of the row houses which resulted in 11 deaths (John Africa, five other adults, and five children aged 7 to 13) the destruction of 61 homes that left 250 homeless. The Rev. Dr. Mitchell, more vocally criticized the lack of response on several levels, particularly the refusal by the U.S. Department of Justice to hold hearings and by the lack of reparations of those left homeless.

Alexsandra Mitchell's paternal grandfather (the late husband of the Rev. Dr. Sadie S. Mitchell) was Charles Thomas Mitchell, Jr. (1906–1976). He, too, was a civic leader in Philadelphia. In the 1960s, he served as Field Director of the Philadelphia Anti-Poverty Action Committee (PAAC), an initiative established February 22, 1965, by Mayor James H. J. Tate. Charles T. Mitchell, in his youth, had been star basketball player for Howard University.

Other ancestors as educators

• Alexsandra Mitchell's 2nd great-aunt (Rev. Dr. Sadie S. Mitchell's maternal aunt), Florence Ramos C. Ramos (née Florence H. Clifton; 1902–1985) spent her entire career, 43 years (from 1924 to 1967), teaching 1st and 2nd grade at the Singerly School (later known as the Douglass-Singerly School) at 22nd and Norris Streets in Philadelphia. Florence's father (2nd great grandfather of Alexsandra Mitchell), John T. Clifton, was also an educator who taught at the Octavius V. Catto School, then located on Lombard Street, near South 20th Street (south side of Lombard Street, west of 20th). The building for the Catto School was erected sometime after 1878 and closed in 1910.

• Evorn "Ronnie" Gilmore Stridiron Stewart (née Evorn Gilmore; 1928–2013), wife of Alexsandra's great uncle, Clifton Thomas Maxwell Stridiron, Sr. (1923–1979), taught high school English and French in Bowie, Maryland, before accepting the position of librarian at the Brooklyn Children’s Library. Ronnie eventually moved to Philadelphia, where she had a long career as a librarian in the Philadelphia school system.

References

Category:Living people

Category:Howard University alumni

Category:New York University alumni

Category:Long Island University alumni

Category:American educators

Category:American literary theorists

Category:African-American academics

Category:American literary critics

Category:African-American studies scholars

Category:New York Public Library people

Category:Female archivists