About Ruth Mitchell

 Guest post by Natalie Hernandez

For the Twitter reenactment I decided to portray Ruth Knowles Mitchell, who is a real historical figure. Ruth Mitchell was the daughter of John L. Mitchell and Harriet Danforth Becker and was born on April 30^th, 1889. My Twitter handle will be @RuthMitchell01. Ruth married three times and chose to keep the Mitchell name through all her marriages. Ruth had a different mother than Billy Mitchell, which made them step-siblings, but they were close. For the Twitter reenactment, I will interact with Billy either through replying to his posts directly or reacting to events that involve him. Based on the memoir , My Brother Bill, and news articles, she respected and supported Billy.

The tone of the Tweets that involve responding to Billy or events about him will be supportive and fiercely protective. I will also create Tweets about Ruth reacting to her father’s and brother’s deaths. I was uncertain to include Tweets regarding their deaths because it is a sensitive topic, but ultimately, I felt that Ruth would have commemorated her father and brother. A long with interacting with events surrounding Billy, my tweets will be updates of events that she experienced as the timeline of the reenactment progresses. Ruth was often overseas when the events that the reenactment covers would occur. Although Ruth did not personally experience the events there is documentation on her reaction and thoughts regarding the events. I will use this documentation to shape how I want to portray Ruth Mitchell’s personality.

Before 1938 my Tweets will include information about her life in England, her marriage to Stanley Knowles, and her kids. I will Tweet about her publication the Friendship Travel Magazine and her travels with “The Young Adventurers.” Starting from 1938 my Tweets will be about Ruth living in the Balkans and how she got involved with the Chetniks and how that eventually led to her imprisonment in a dozen German prisons. There will also be Tweets about Ruth advocating for US support of the Chetniks once she returned to Milwaukee. I will include Tweets about Ruth writing “Chetnik Tells the Facts about the Fighting Serbs Mihailovich and Yugoslavia”. The tone of these Tweets will be determined, passionate, and powerful because I imagine her being enraged about the whole situation and committed to her cause. There will also be Tweets about her writing My Brother Bill and when she toured the United States to promote the Warner Brothers film The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell. Overall, my tweets will convey a strong willed, confident women who is doing things on her own accord. The tone of the Tweets will shift slightly as she lives in the Balkans since I imagine during that time, she had a different perspective on life since she was willing to affiliate herself in an active resistance group.

Follow Ruth Mitchell on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RuthMitchell01.