“John Mitchell, Jr., Fighting Editor.”
In Richmond’s Black History Museum and Cultural Centre, the metal plaque catches my eye. It looks like it has been ripped off a street-side signpost.

“Born enslaved near Richmond [Virginia] in 1863, John Mitchell, Jr., came of age in the tumultuous post-Civil War era,” the text begins. “In 1883, he launched a daring journalism career, becoming editor and publisher of the black-owned Richmond Planet, once located near here. Known as the ‘Fighting Editor,’ Mitchell crusaded against lynching.”

He spearheaded a boycott against segregated streetcars. He ran for governor in a fight for voting rights. And more. He persevered as editor until his death in 1929.

How interesting, I think, that the sign is topped by an insignia showing a spear-wielding woman standing triumphant, foot on the chest of a subjugated man.
“Sic semper tyrannis,” I read.

That is Latin for “Thus always to tyrants.” It’s the motto of Virginia, and the insignia is in fact Virginia’s state seal. It means that tyrants will inevitably be overthrown, whether by fighting editors or by their own karma.

The image shows Virtue, spear in hand, her foot on the recumbent form of Tyranny, whose crown lies nearby. An eloquent “No Kings” statement, or anti-slavery?

John Mitchell, Jr., was 21 when he became editor. He crusaded courageously against racial injustices such as the Ku Klux Klan, segregation, voting rights, and those brutal killings known as lynching.
After he wrote a fiery editorial about a lynching in Charlotte County, an event ignored by the white press, he received, and published, an anonymous letter threatening, “If you poke that infernal head of yours in this county long enough for us to do it, we will hang you higher than he was hung.”
Mitchell’s response quoted Shakespeare: “There are no terrors, Cassius, in your threats, for I am armed so strong in honesty that they pass me by like the idle winds, which I respect not.”
Then he went to Charlotte County, walked five miles to the scene of the crime, and toured the neighbourhood and the jail from which the black man had been kidnapped, all while wearing a pair of revolvers.

“The cowardly letter writer was nowhere in evidence,” he reported.
This brings me back to 2026. Yet another newspaper bites the dust: the Richmond Free Press, the city’s only African-American newspaper.

Sic semper editores? I hope not. We need our fighting editors!

Rachel normally writes from the old hamlet of Maple Leaf, in Newport, but is currently visiting family in the U.S.