Mitchell v. United States was a landmark legal case in Black history. It was a Supreme Court decision in 1951 that challenged racial discrimination in jury selection. The case centered around the systematic exclusion of African Americans from jury service in Tennessee, where Black individuals were intentionally excluded from juries through the use of peremptory challenges by prosecutors.

The defendant, Robert Mitchell, was an African American man who was convicted of raping a white woman by an all-white jury. Mitchell's legal team argued that the exclusion of Black individuals from the jury violated his constitutional rights to equal protection under the law.

The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favor of Mitchell, stating that the systematic exclusion of African Americans from juries based on race was unconstitutional and violated the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. This decision was a significant victory in the fight against racial discrimination in the criminal justice system and inspired later legal challenges to discriminatory jury selection practices.