Volume 16 , Issue 6

Margaret Mitchell: American Rebel

We should all know who Margaret Mitchell is by now. Especially for her one book (or novel), "Gone With the Wind," that she published in 1936, which sold millions of copies at the height of the Great Depression in America and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937. You can view PBS's video American Masters - Margaret Mitchell: American Rebel.



Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind was so popular that her career as an author overshadowed her earlier career as a newspaper reporter for the Atlanta Journal. When Mitchell wrote for the Journal she used the name of "Peggy Mitchell."

At the age of twenty-two, in 1922, Peggy Mitchell was determined to earn a living by writing, setting a simple goal of becoming a journalist for the Atlanta Journal. Her first visit to city editor's Harllee Branch's office was not successful, though. Branch was impressed by her earnestness, but he felt the time was not right for the Journal to hire women reporters.

Mitchell then moved to apply at the Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine, who did hire women. This time she spoke to Angus Perkerson, the Scottish born editor of the Sunday Magazine. Mitchell was hired for $25 a week and reported for work to Forsyth Street near the downtown rail yards just before Christmas, 1922. Mitchell replaced another female reporter.

Peggy Mitchell's first byline appeared on 31 December 1922 on a story entitled Atlanta Girl Sees Italian Revolution. Mitchell had trumped her editor, who had assigned her to find out about skirt lengths in the coming year and turned the piece into one on the overthrow of the Italian government by Benito Mussolini. Over the next four years Peggy Mitchell turned in 127 additional stories featuring her byline and countless others that didn't, including some for city editor Branch. Peggy Mitchell's final piece for the Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine was titled "Pigeons To Race From Atlanta To Havana."

When young Margaret Mitchell was called to write a piece for Harllee Branch she was nervous. She thought her work would not stand up to the demands of the city editor who once refused her a job. Then she saw Branch showing a copy of her work to the other city room reporters, telling them they should do work as good as this. Peggy Mitchell was vindicated. It was a comment by her own boss, Angus Perkerson, that meant the most to her. On a story about pugilist Tiger Flowers, Mitchell made the fighter "...live and breathe in print." Perkerson went on to tell her the story was "...written like a man."   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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