"If the novel has a theme it is that of survival. What makes some people able to come through catastrophes and others, apparently just as able, strong and brave, go under? It happens in every upheaval. Some people survive; others don't. What qualities are in those who fight their way through triumphantly that are lacking in those who go under...? I only know that the survivors used to call that quality 'gumption.' So I wrote about the people who had gumption and the people who didn't." Margaret Mitchell @ Macmillan 1936

Author of the best-selling novel of all time, Margaret Mitchell was born Nov. 8, 1900 in Atlanta to a family with ancestry not unlike the O’Hara’s in Gone With the Wind. Her mother, Mary Isabelle “Maybelle” Stephens was of Irish-Catholic ancestry. Her father, Eugene Muse Mitchell, an Atlanta attorney, descended from Scotch-Irish and French Huguenots. The family included many soldiers - members of the family had fought in the American Revolution, Irish uprisings and rebellions and the Civil War.

The imaginative child was fascinated with stories of the Civil War that she heard first from her parents and great aunts, who lived at the family’s Jonesboro rural home, and later, from grizzled (and sometimes profane) Confederate veterans who regaled the girl with battlefield stories as Margaret, astride her pony, rode through the countryside around Atlanta with the men.

“She was a great friend of my cousin,” recalled Atlanta resident Mrs. Colquitt Carter. “My cousin always said that when Peggy would spend the night, she would get up in the middle of the night and write things. She was always obsessed with expressing herself.”

The family lived in a series of homes, including a stately home on Peachtree Street beginning in 1912. Young Margaret attended private school, but was not an exceptional student. When, on one memorable day, she announced to her mother that she could not understand mathematics and would not return to school, Maybelle dragged her daughter to a rural road where plantation houses had fallen into ruin.

“It’s happened before and it will happen again,” Maybelle sternly lectured the girl. “And when it does happen, everyone loses everything and everyone is equal. They all start again with nothing at all except the cunning of their brain and the strength of their hands.”

Chastened, Margaret Mitchell returned to school, eventually entering Smith College in the fall of 1918, not long after the United States entered World War I. Her fiancé, Clifford Henry, was killed in action in France. In January 1919, Maybelle Mitchell died during a flu epidemic and Margaret Mitchell left college to take charge of the Atlanta household of her father and her older brother, Stephens.

Although she made her society debut in 1920, Margaret was far too free-spirited and intellectual to be content with the life of a debutante. She quarreled with her fellow debs over the proper distribution of the money they had raised for charity, and she scandalized Atlanta society with a provocative dance that she performed at the debutante ball with a male student from Georgia Tech.

By 1922, Margaret Mitchell was a headstrong “Flapper” pursued by two men, an ex-football player and bootlegger, Berrien “Red” Upshaw, and a lanky newspaperman, John R. Marsh. She chose Upshaw, and the two were married in September. Upshaw’s irregular income led her to seek a job, at a salary of $25 per week, as a writer for The Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine where Marsh was an editor and her mentor.

“There was an excitement in newspapering in the 1920’s, famed editor Ralph McGill recalled. Margaret Mitchell, he said, “was a vibrant, vital person – excited, always, and seeking excitement. And this excitement, I think, was a sort of a hallmark of the 20’s.”

The Upshaw marriage was stormy and short lived. They divorced in October 1924, and less than a year later, she married Marsh. The two held their wedding reception at their new ground-floor apartment at 979 Crescent Avenue – a house which Margaret affectionately nicknamed “The Dump.”

Only months after their marriage, Margaret left her job at the Journal to convalesce from a series of injuries. It was during this period that she began writing the book that would make her world famous.

Gone With The Wind was published in June 1936. Margaret Mitchell was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her sweeping novel in May 1937. The novel was made into an equally famous motion picture starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. The movie had its world premiere at the Loew’s Grand Theater in Atlanta Dec. 15, 1939 with Margaret Mitchell and all of the stars in attendance.

On Aug. 11, 1949, while crossing the intersection of Peachtree and 13th – only three blocks from “The Dump”, Margaret Mitchell was struck by a speeding taxi. She died five days later and is buried in Atlanta’s Oakland Cemetery with other members of her family.

Margaret Mitchell and Black Atlanta
Although of the details of Margaret Mitchell’s public life are well known, there was a secret life which only recently surfaced with the discovery of Margaret Mitchell’s extraordinary involvement with Atlanta’s African American community.

At a time when segregation was the law of the land and the Ku Klux Klan regularly held rallies at nearby Stone Mountain, Margaret Mitchell was working on several projects with black Atlantans, notably one involving medical education.

Her involvement with the African American community began when Peggy was a 19-year old debutante. She was the only one of her debutante group who chose to work in the city’s black clinics. This was a reason why she was rejected from the Junior League.

In 1941, Dr. Benjamin Mays had come to historically black Morehouse College as its new president and sought help for promising students. The first person he approached was Margaret Mitchell. Despite the stern admonitions she received from her parents about hoarding money in time of war, Margaret agreed to an anonymous donation of $80, enough at that time to put one student through one year of medical school.

When Dr. Mays wrote her a letter describing, in detail, the impact her gift had on its young recipient, the novelist decided to arrange her finances to make these contributions a regular event. Dr. Mays agreed to keep the scholarship fund a secret, and did so for many years after her death.

The fund came to light when Dr. Otis Smith, the first African American in the state of Georgia to be certified as a pediatrician, approached Mary Rose Taylor, chairman of the Margaret Mitchell House, Inc., with the story.

Dr. Smith, who also is a past president of the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP, had been a first-year student at Meharry Medical College, in Nashville, Tenn., when his money ran out. Despite his years of work as a teacher, shoe shiner and field hand, he told Dr. Mays he simply had no more money. Mays sent him back to Nashville, and said cryptically, “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll take care of it.”

His tuition and fees were completely paid, but it was 35 years later (and Margaret Mitchell had long ago died) before Dr. Mays revealed the source of the gift – one of about 40 to 50 Margaret Mitchell had made to African American medical students.

Her interest in Atlanta’s black community was again made evident when it was also revealed that she supported the early efforts to desegregate the city’s police department.

Highlights of her life:

1900 Born on November 8 into a segregated Atlanta that was called the "New South." Baptized at Sacred Heart Church on Peachtree Street.

1912 Moves from childhood home in Jackson Hill in southeast Atlanta to a white-columned mansion at 1149 Peachtree Street. In order to play with her brother, Stephens, and the other boys in the neighborhood, Margaret quickly becomes a tomboy. She dresses in knickers and calls herself "Jimmy." She writes, produces, and directs plays, casting her friends and inviting the neighborhood over. The front parlor rooms of her home are perfect staging areas.

1917 Falls in love and becomes engaged to Lt. Clifford Henry, a Harvard man in training at Camp Gordon in Atlanta. He is stationed in France and Margaret starts her first year at Smith College in the fall of 1918.

1911 - 1919 While at Smith, she receives word that Clifford has died. Soon after, her mother becomes ill, and Margaret rushes home to see her but does not make it in time.

1920 Makes her debut and causes a scandal with her "Apache Dance." She is refused admission into the Junior League because of the nature of the dance and because she chose to do charity work in the wards for the black and the poor at Grady Hospital.

1922 She is surrounded by suitors, but Red Upshaw and John Marsh remain the top competitors for her attention. Margaret marries Upshaw in September of that year and the couple moves in with Margaret's family. Shortly thereafter, Red becomes abusive, and Margaret realizes he is both a bootlegger and an alcoholic. The two separate and eventually divorce. Margaret lands a job as a reporter at the Atlanta Journal Magazine. She soon becomes the first woman to cover hard news for the Atlanta Journal.

1925 Margaret marries John Marsh on July 4 (she liked to tell her friends she was married on "Independence Day"). They host their wedding reception in apartment #1 on Crescent Avenue. A former newspaper reporter, John works as the editor of the Georgia Power Company magazine, eventually rising to vice president of advertising and marketing.

1926 Margaret is forced to quit her job at the newspaper because of arthritis in her ankles and feet. She spends time at home in bed, reading voraciously. John, tired of lugging books home for Margaret to read, brings her a second-hand portable Remington typewriter with the words, "Madam, I greet you on the beginning of a great new career." John's thought was that because Margaret had read basically every book in the public library, she should write her own book. Margaret begins composing what her friends jokingly call, "the great American novel," writing about what she had learned from the many stories her elders had told her as she was growing up.

1929 The bulk of her work is completed. Only two people, John and her friend Lois Cole, who worked for Macmillan Publishing Company, know the details of her writing.

1932 Margaret and John move from the Crescent Avenue Apartments to the Russell Apartments at Peachtree and 17th streets.

1935 Harold Latham of Macmillan Publishing heads south in search of new writers after Georgian author Caroline Miller wins a Pulitzer prize for Lamb in His Bosom. Lois Cole asks Margaret to show Latham around Atlanta. Margaret agrees to meet Latham but repeatedly refuses his requests to see her manuscript. After an acquaintance cattily remarks to her that she is "not serious enough" to be a writer, Margaret finally gives in, gathering up her tattered manuscript and driving it over to Latham's hotel. She tells him to "take the damn thing" before she changes her mind. Latham is spellbound by the manuscript. After conferring with the head of the English Literature department at Columbia University, he buys it from Margaret.

1936 The book is published on June 10 and by October has sold one million copies. The popularity of the book begins to change her life and she is besieged by letters and telephone calls from all over the world. The most popular question is "Does Scarlett get Rhett back?" Hollywood producer David O. Selznick buys the film rights to Margaret's manuscript for $50,000, top dollar at the time. Once again, she is besieged, this time by would-be actresses wanting a part in the film.

1937 Margaret wins Pulitzer prize for her best-selling book.

1939 Atlanta rolls out the red carpet for Hollywood at the movie's premiere at Loew's Grand Theatre, located on Peachtree Street in the heart of Atlanta. Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh stay at the Georgian Terrace. The black community is outraged that the hotel does not allow the movie's black actors or actresses to stay there.

1940's Margaret becomes a full-time volunteer and devotes most of her time, energy and wealth to the following projects:
• Sponsored undergraduate and medical school education of fifty Morehouse College graduates.
• Credited by Hughes Spalding with the inspiration for the Hughes Spalding Pavilion at Grady Hospital.
• Funded black and white emergency clinics at Grady Hospital.
• Campaigned across the Southeast and raised $65 million to rebuild USS Atlanta after it sank at Guadalcanal.
• Helped to rebuild French town of Vimontiers after World War II.
• Supported police chief Herbert Jenkins in integrating Atlanta Police Department.
• Led creative writing program at Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.
• Covered medical expenses for many nuns associated with the Sisters of Mercy of St. Joseph's Infirmary.
• Nursed friends, relatives, and household help at bedside at Grady Hospital and St. Joseph's.

1949 On August 11, while crossing Peachtree Street to go to a theater, Margaret is hit by an off-duty cab driver. Suffering from internal injuries, she dies several days later at Grady Hospital. Her memorial service is at Patterson's Funeral Home, and she is buried at Oakland Cemetery in the Mitchell family plot.

1952 John Marsh dies of a heart attack in his sleep. He is buried next to Margaret in Oakland Cemetery.

1965 Awarded Shining Light Award by Atlanta Gas Light and WSB radio in recognition of her contributions to humanity.

1997 Margaret Mitchell House, birthplace of Gone With The Wind, is dedicated to the City of Atlanta in honor of the indomitable spirit of Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell.

2000 Publication of Before Scarlett: the girlhood writings of Margaret Mitchell, a book comprised of recently-discovered stories, novellas, and plays written by Margaret from ages 7 to 18. The Margaret Mitchell House & Museum has on display the composition books and journals Margaret wrote in as a child.