A portion of Richardson Street in Ravenna Township will be renamed for community advocate Beatrice Mitchell, who was instrumental in getting sewer and water service into the McElrath Allotment.
The ceremony is planned from 5 to 7 p.m. Aug. 30 at the Mitchell-McClelland Ballfield. Attendees are asked to bring a lawn chair. In the event of inclement weather, the ceremony will move to the gymnasium at the nearby King-Kennedy Center, 6660 Garfield Road.
It is the second street in Ravenna Township to be renamed in honor of a community activist. In 2023, a portion of Portage Street in the Skeels Allotment was renamed for Deseree Liddell, an author and community advocate in Ravenna Township.
Honoring community legends
Ravenna Township trustees approved the name change in July at the request of Frank Hairston. Portage County commissioners then hosted a public hearing July 31 and approved the renaming of the street.
Hairston said a group of residents is working to find projects to improve the community.
“Mrs. Mitchell was a stalwart, not only in Ravenna Township, but all over Portage County,” Hairston said
Mitchell, who died Jan. 4 at age 95, moved to Ravenna in 1961 with her husband and three children. Her husband worked for General Motors in Hudson and quickly became involved in community activism, spending much of his time advocating for a public water system in their community. Beatrice Mitchell soon followed suit and began volunteering with the local 4-H Club and used her sewing skills to provide activities for young girls in the McElrath community. Mitchell spent many years employed as a nurse at Robinson Memorial Hospital, now University Hospitals Portage Medical Center.
According to documentation from the Housing and Urban Development Agency in 1970, McElrath was viewed as the third worst rural poverty area in the nation. The neighborhood is south of Route 14 and west of North Chestnut Street.
Mitchell led the McElrath Improvement Corporation for more than 45 years, retiring in 2018.
Later, she turned her attention to building baseball fields on a lot where illegal trash dumping was occurring.
Melvin “Drew” Mitchell talks Monday, Aug. 25, 2025, about his mother, Beatrice Mitchell, who led a move to clean up illegal dumping and build the Mitchell-McClelland Ballfield on the Ravenna site. A portion of Richardson Street, between Garfield Road and Terrill Lane, will be renamed Beatrice Mitchell Boulevard in honor of the late community leader.
Liddell, 97, moved to Ravenna Township in 1951, becoming a resident of the Skeels allotment. She taught low-income children in the first Portage County Head Start Program and at Friendship House Nursery School in Ravenna.
She was instrumental in helping to get water and sewer, a natural gas line and streetlights in the Skeels and McElrath allotments and pushed to get Black administrators in Ravenna schools.
Her book, “The Higher You Climb, the Broader the View,” tells the story of her early life living under Jim Crow laws in Mississippi before moving to Ravenna as a young wife.
Trustee Jim DiPaola said he was familiar with Mitchell’s work to improve the community.
Gene Brown said he grew up knowing Mitchell, and remembers her recruiting garbage haulers to park near the future ballpark property so volunteers could load trash into the trucks.
“She was a person who has cried over that community,” he said. “She had the same fiber as Mrs. Liddell. She could do it by herself or she could do it with a group, and she preferred to do it with a group.”
A son remembers
Melvin “Drew” Mitchell, who was a small child when he came to McElrath with his parents, said they were shocked by the conditions of their new neighborhood. Many residents were without basic utilities, and had no indoor plumbing.
“They would see outhouses and people pumping water from a well, like they did years ago,” he said. “At least we had indoor plumbing, but a lot of people didn’t even have that.”
After working to bring utilities into the neighborhood, Mitchell and the McElrath Improvement Corporation turned their attention to cleaning up illegal dumping and placing a ballfield on the site of a dump.
He said his mother took “meticulous notes” on all the McElrath Improvement Corporation’s activities. In 2017, she donated documents, photos and other historical archives from the McElrath community to Kent State University Libraries. The collection is housed in the main library’s Department of Special Collections and Archives.
“I hope the community keeps her spirit alive,” her son said.
Reporter Diane Smith can be reached at dsmith@recordpub.com.
This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Ravenna Township street to be renamed for advocate Beatrice Mitchell