propagandist Mildred Lewis Rutherford (July 16, 1851 – August 15, 1928) was a prominent white supremacist speaker, educator, and author from Athens, Georgia.

[3] Mildred Rutherford was the granddaughter of John Addison Cobb, whose involvement in agriculture (he owned a plantation with 209 slaves by 1840), the Georgia Railroad, and real estate made him "one of the area's wealthiest men".

In agreeing to head the school, Rutherford had insisted that the all-male board of directors cede to her its control of the budget and power to hire and fire staff.

In 1881, Nellie Stovall wrote "a beautiful and girlish letter"[12] to George I. Seney, who responded with $10,000 in funding (and a challenge to the town for an additional $4,000)[13] for the structure, an octagonal red brick building called the Seney–Stovall Chapel.

[16]Rutherford was an accomplished public speaker – she ofttimes dressed as a southern belle when orating – who addressed a great number of local organizations, including the YMCA, the Ladies Memorial Association (for which she served as president),[17] and the Athens chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), and in November 1912 addressed the national assembly of the UDC as their historian general.

[9] In 1927 Rutherford became seriously ill.[20] Late on Christmas night, as she convalesced, her house suffered a devastating fire, consuming many of her personal papers and belongings, including "most of her private collection of Confederate artifacts".

[20] Goals of her writing included "establishing the South's contribution to United States history, legitimizing secession, and idealizing the antebellum plantation",[27] and she defended American slavery, thinking its only problem was the burden it put upon the white slaveholders.

[19] She viewed "true history" – the way she saw, defined, and proselytized it – as a potential common ground between North and South, and also believed it to be a potent political weapon in support of the causes she espoused.

[31] Historian David W. Blight stated that she sought the vindication of the Confederacy "with a political fervor that would rival the ministry of propaganda in any twentieth-century dictatorship".