Former Belleville woman honored for opening community center for all races in the 1960s
Mayor Patty Gregory will proclaim Monday as “Virginia Mitchell Day” in Belleville to recognize a woman who worked to fill a void and create recreational and social opportunities for Black children and adults in the 1960s.
The late Virginia Mitchell founded a community center on South 20th Street in a predominantly Black neighborhood. But she emphasized that everyone was welcome, “regardless of race, color or creed.”
“She did all kinds of things in the community, and that’s why she was eventually invited to (Jimmy Carter’s) presidential inauguration,” said granddaughter Nancy Greer-Williams, 70, a college professor in Mesa, Arizona. “She was a community activist and what I would call an ‘influencer.’”
Greer-Williams traveled to the metro-east for a luncheon on Monday at Spaces to honor Mitchell, who lived from 1905 to 1990. Other family members came from as far away as the United Kingdom.
Mitchell’s oldest granddaughter, Cheryl Gray, 75, lives in Belleville. As a girl, she stayed with her grandmother on a regular basis.
Gray called Mitchell a “no-nonsense” type of person who insisted that her children and grandchildren be educated and work hard.
“She taught us honesty, dressing with style, the importance of having God in our lives, plus fair and equal treatment for everyone,” said Gray, a retired civil servant at Scott Air Force Base.
Single mother of eight
The former Virginia Woodson grew up in Lebanon, married Leroy Mitchell at age 18 and had nine children. She divorced and moved to Belleville in 1945.
“Leroy was a carrier of tuberculosis, and he brought it home,” Greer-Williams said. “Their oldest child, a daughter named Mary, contracted it, and she died on Christmas Day at the age of 14.”
Virginia Mitchell remained a single mother, rearing her other eight children, as well as two of her granddaughters. Diedre and Diana Mitchell’s father, William, had been stabbed to death in Madison, Wisconsin, while serving in the U.S. Air Force.
Virginia Mitchell cleaned houses, cooked, did laundry and worked as a caterer to make ends meet for the family.
“She was a strong Black woman,” said Diedre Mitchell, 65, who works in the restaurant industry in Frisco, Texas. “She was never on welfare. She never got food stamps.”
Gray remembers Virginia Mitchell opening her home for a campaign event that allowed Black residents of Belleville to meet Wyvetter Younge, a Black candidate for Illinois House of Representatives. Younge served from 1975 until her death in 2008.
Rent was $5 a month
Mitchell rented a small former church at 702 S. 20th St. to open a community center in 1964. She raised money for new siding, electrical wiring and other renovations, according to newspaper stories. Rent was $5 a month.
The grand opening of the Kennedy Center took place on Sunday, March 22, 1964.
“(Mitchell said the) program would have as its theme a quotation from the late President John F. Kennedy who was assassinated just 4 months ago tomorrow,” a BND notice stated. “This theme, she said, is ‘If I help somebody as I pass along then my living shall not be in vain.’”
The center was renamed the Kennedy-King Center in 1969. It was dedicated to the “humane ideals” of President Kennedy, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King, who had all been assassinated.
Over the years, center supporters raised money through fashion shows, concerts and other activities to keep the doors open.
Mitchell also was a member of the League of Women Voters, the NAACP and missionary societies of St. Luke African Methodist Episcopal Church and Shiloh A.M.E. Church in East St. Louis; and Sunday school president at Wilkerson Chapel A.M.E. Church in Belleville.
Mitchell was named “Good Samaritan of the Year” by Wilkerson Chapel in 1970.
“She did things that were ahead of her time,” granddaughter Diedra Mitchell said. “She had only an eighth-grade education, but she was very smart, and she was proud of being a Black woman. She always instilled in us a sense of Black history.”
