W. E. B. Du Bois to Charles W. Chesnutt, 16 July 1903
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16
OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT,RALPH W. McGRANAHAN UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE BOARD OF MISSIONS
TO THE FREEDMEN OF THE UNITED PRESBYTERIAN
CHURCH OF NORTH AMERICA KNOXVILLE COLLEGE,1 KNOXVILLE, TENN. July 16, 1903 Dear Mr. Chesnutt:
I am going to be in Boston this summer @ 97 Sawyer Ave., Dorchester.2 It is barely possible that I may get west, if so I'll let you know. I am rather confident that the right kind of a journal could get support and I propose to edit it myself.3 I have an excellent printer in mind—college-bred & expert & full of sacrifice.4 I hope we can talk this matter over.
Very Sincerely W.E.B. Du BoisCorrespondent: 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 University, 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. Knoxville College in Knoxville, Tennessee, is a small historically Black college (HBCU). Originally founded by Presbyterians as a Normal School to train Black teachers in 1876, it became a college in 1901. W. E. B. Du Bois had ties to the area, since he had attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee (1885–1888), and taught school in the area during the summers. In 1903, he lectured at Knoxville College during its second summer school session, which began on June 24, 1903. [back]
2. 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]
3. 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 from 1910 to 1934. [back]
4. Very likely Edward L. Simon, a former student of W. E. B. Du Bois from Atlanta University and instructor of printing at LeMoyne College, who founded a print shop in Memphis, Tennessee, in partnership with Du Bois and later produced the short-lived journal The Moon (1905–1906). [back]
