Charles W. Chesnutt to W. E. B. Du Bois, 27 June 1903
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CHAS. W. CHESNUTT
1005 WILLIAMSON BUILDING.
CLEVELAND, O.
Cleveland, June 27, 1903.
Dr. W.E.B. DuBois,
Atlanta University,
Atlanta, Ga.
21-4-41
My dear Doctor DuBois:-
I beg to acknowledge receipt of the clipping which you return to me;1 it was not important but I thank you just the same.
Potts have accepted my article on the disfranchisement of the Negro.2 I take a firm stand for manhood suffrage and the enforcement of the constitutional amendments. I take no stock whatever in these disfranchisement constitutions. The South is suffering a great deal more from the malignity of the whites than the ignorance of the Negro.3 I have wondered whether your book on the "Souls of Black Folk"4 had any direct effect in stirring up the peonage investigation in Alabama; it might well have done so.5
I have not forgotten what you say about a national Negro journal.6 It is a matter concerning which one would like to think and consult before committing himself. There are already many "colored" papers; how they support themselves may be guessed at from the contents—most of them are mediums for hair straightening advertisements and the personal laudation of "self-made men", most of whom are not so well made that they really ought to brag much about it. The question of support would be the vital one for such a journal. What the Negro needs more than anything else is a medium through which he can present his case to thinking white people, who after all are the arbiters of our destiny. How helpless the Negro is in the South your own writings give ample proof; while
CHAS. W. CHESNUTT
1005 WILLIAMSON BUILDING.
CLEVELAND, O.
-2-
21-4-42
in the North he is so vastly in the minority in numbers, to say nothing of his average humble condition, that his influence alone would be inconsiderable. I fear few white people except the occasional exchange editors, read the present newspapers published by colored people. Whether you could reach that class of readers and at the same time get a sufficient subscription list from all sources to support the paper is the thing which I would advise you to consider carefully before you risk much money. The editing of a newspaper is the next vital consideration. To do it properly would require all the time of a good man—he ought to be as good a man as yourself. I wish I could talk with you. Where will you spend the summer? Let me know your movements and it is possible that I might find it convenient to be at the same place some before the fall.7
I presume what you have written concerning me has not yet appeared, but have no doubt it will be just and complimentary, and I thank you for it in advance.8
Sincerely yours, Chas. W. ChesnuttCorrespondent: William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868–1963) was a sociologist, historian, and world-renowned civil rights activist. After completing coursework at the University of Berlin and Harvard, Du Bois became the first African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard in 1895. He was a professor of history, sociology, and economics at Atlanta University (1897-1910 and again in the 1930s). He was a prominent leader of the Niagara Movement and helped found the NAACP in 1909. As the editor of the NAACP's journal, The Crisis, from 1910 to 1931, Du Bois published four of Chesnutt's short stories as well as two of his essays. See "The Doll" (April 1912), "Mr. Taylor's Funeral" (April/May 1915), "The Marked Tree" (Dec 1924/Jan 1925), and "Concerning Father" (May 1930); and "Women's Rights" (1915) and "The Negro in Art" (November 1926).
1. In an unlocated letter, Du Bois returned clippings of Horace Traubel's and William Dean Howells's reviews of Chesnutt's work that he had sent along with a biographical sketch; see Chesnutt's letter from May or early June 1903.[back]
2. James Pott & Company was founded by James Pott (1829–1905) in the 1880s; his son James (1859–1931) joined the company in 1884. In January of 1903, the publishing house solicited essays from leading Black American writers for their book The Negro Problem, published September 1903. Chesnutt's contribution, "Disfranchisement of the Negro," was one of seven essays. The other contributors were W. E. B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Paul Laurence Dunbar, T. Thomas Fortune, Wilford H. Smith, and H. T. Keeling [back]
3. Chesnutt addressed the question of the franchise and suppression of the Black vote in the South often, including in his 1903 essay "Disfranchisement of the Negro."[back]
4. W. E. B. Du Bois' influential analysis of Black life in the United States, The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches, was published in April 1903 (Chicago: A. C. McClurg). Several of the essays, which combined sociological analysis with a powerful literary style, had previously appeared in the Atlantic Monthly.[back]
5. Peonage, a system of debt imprisonment that allowed for widespread continuation of enslaved labor for Black people, had become widespread across the South in the 1890s. An important grand jury trial, under the auspices of federal district Judge Thomas G. Jones (1844–1914) about a peonage machine in Coosa and Tallapoosa counties, was in process in the summer of 1903 and widely covered in the press. Chesnutt addressed peonage most directly in his 1905 novel The Colonel's Dream.[back]
6. In 1903, W. E. B. Du Bois contemplated launching a new journal with a focus on race that could reach a wide audience, and he consulted a number of Black and White allies. After editing the short-lived Moon Illustrated Weekly, which only had a circulation of a few hundred copies (December 1905 to mid-1906) and another magazine that folded after three years, The Horizon: A Journal of the Color Line (1907–1910), Du Bois, under the NAACP's auspices, launched a monthly magazine, The Crisis (1910–present). It had a circulation of 100,000 by 1918, and Du Bois served as editor 1910–1934.[back]
7. After visiting Knoxville College and the Tuskegee Institute in July, W. E. B. Du Bois and his wife Nina (ca. 1870–1950) spent the late summer of 1903 in the Boston suburb of Dorchester, Massachusetts, at 97 Sawyer Avenue, the home of William Monroe Trotter (1872–1934) and Geraldine Pindell Trotter (1872–1918). Chesnutt does not seem to have traveled to Boston to meet Du Bois.[back]
8. W. E. B. Du Bois's article "Possiblities of the Negro: The Advance Guard of the Race" was published in Booklovers Magazine 2, no. 1 (July 1903): 2–15. In his brief illustrated sketches of accomplished Black men, he juxtaposed poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872–1906) and painter Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937) with Chesnutt (see page 13). The portrait photograph Chesnutt sent to the publishers was reprinted on page 9.[back]
