Charles W. Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, 5 March 1904
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CHAS. W. CHESNUTT
1005 WILLIAMSON BUILDING.
CLEVELAND. O.
Cleveland, O., March 5, 1904.
Dr. Booker T. Washington,
Tuskegee, Alabama.
Dear Dr. Washington:-
Some one has sent me from Tuskegee1 a copy of part of the Montgomery Advertiser containing your letter to the Age-Herald2 concerning the shocking outrages against negroes in the South. It is a timely word and I hope may make some impression. I fear however that the race has not yet touched the depths to which the present movement seems tending. The refusal of the Kentucky Legislature to adopt the disfranchising amendment3 scarcely offsets the destruction of Berea College.4 The bill to disfranchise the negroes in Maryland went through with no more commotion, no more show of interest, than would have gone a bill to repair a bridge across a creek.5
I have always admired your cheerful optimism, and I sincerely hope it many stand the strain upon it. But the present state of public opinion upon the race question is profoundly discouraging. I had imagined that we had reached the depths of contemptuous disregard in the case of Senator Tillman,6 but Governor Vardaman7 has gone far beyond him, and Bishop Brown8 of Arkansas—a product of this city, by the
way or at least a former resident, and a bishop of my own church here—had out-herod's Herod. Even these things could be endured, but when ‸Pres't Eliot of Harvard comes out with his curious speech in New York, justifying by inference the rigid caste system of the South which is the real thing that is holding the colored people down, I feel the foundations
CHAS. W. CHESNUTT
1005 WILLIAMSON BUILDING.
CLEVELAND, O.
-2- Dr. B.T.W.
falling.9 I am profoundly convinced that a race without political power or influence is and will continue to become even more so a race without rights. From its present attitude there seems no immediate remedy through the Supreme Court of the United States.
I hope that you do not underestimate the power of education, but these ferocious outbreaks such as that which disgraced the State of Mississippi and called forth your letter, make me wonder if we do not underestimate the power of race prejudice to obscure the finer feelings of humanity. With best wishes for your continued success, I remain,
Cordially yours, Chas. W. Chesnutt.Correspondent: Booker T. Washington (1856–1913), one of the most well-known Black activists of the early 20th century, was born into slavery in Virginia. In 1881, he became the president of what would become the Tuskegee Institute, advocating widely as a speaker and writer for technical education for Blacks, whose entry into American industry and business leadership he believed to be the road to equality. His political power was significant, but because he frequently argued for compromise with White Southerners, including on voting rights, he was also criticized by other Black activists, especially by W. E. B. Du Bois.
1. The Tuskegee Institute (now University), in Tuskegee, Alabama, evolved from the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers, founded in 1881, with Booker T. Washington as its first president. It became a leading educational institution for Blacks in the South, emphasizing teacher training and industrial education. Chesnutt, who had himself been the principal of a Black normal school in the early 1880s, first visited Tuskegee in February 1901, and remained well-informed about and personally connected with the institution all his life. [back]
2. Booker T. Washington sent a letter to the Birmingham Age-Herald on February 29, 1904, with an advance press release sent to papers nationwide (cf. New York Times, 29, February 1904: 5). The letter condemns three recent lynchings of two Black men and a Black woman accused of murder in February of 1904 (of Luther Holbert and a woman, possibly his wife Anne, on February 7, 1904, in Sunflower, Mississippi, and of Glenco Bays on February 19, 1904, near Crossett, Arkansas). [back]
3. A bill designed to disenfranchise Black voters via a literacy clause and a grandfather clause, introduced by Democrat Paul Heflin, was tabled by the Kentucky House on February 2, 1904. On the same day the bill introduced by Carl Day to segregate Kentucky's private schools, targeted at Berea College, was approved for a second reading. The Cleveland Gazette reported on both in the same brief notice (February 13, 1904: 2). [back]
4. In Berea College v. Kentucky (1908), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a 1904 Kentucky state law prohibiting interracial education. Justices John Marshall Harlan (1833–1911) and William R. Day (1849–1923) dissented. Chesnutt mentions the case in two unpublished speeches, "The Race Problem," ca. 1904, and "The Courts and the Negro," ca. 1908. See Charles W. Chesnutt: Essays and Speeches, eds. Joseph R. McElrath, Jr., Robert C. Leitz, III, Jesse S. Crisler (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 196–205 and 262–270. [back]
5. The Poe Amendment to the Maryland Constitution, an effort to disenfranchise Black voters via a literacy test and a grandfather clause, was approved by the Maryland Senate on March 2 and the House on March 10, 1904. Opposition, led by White and Black Republicans and some Democrats, was strong and the Amendment was defeated at the general election in 1905. The Cleveland Gazette reported on the Legislature vote for the Amendment on March 12, 1904. [back]
6. Benjamin R. Tillman (1847–1918) was a White Democrat from South Carolina who served as governor (1890–1894) and US Senator (1895–1913). Well known for his blatantly racist language and political actions, he was instrumental in establishing South Carolina's 1895 constitution, which disenfranchised virtually all Blacks as well as poor Whites. He vehemently opposed access to education for Blacks and openly advocated lynching in cases of alleged rape by Black men of White women. [back]
7. James Kimble Vardaman (1861–1930) was a self-described White supremacist Mississippi Democrat who ran on a platform of Black voter suppression. He served in the Mississippi House of Representatives (1890–1896), as governor (1904–1908), and as U.S. Senator (1913–1919). Chesnutt references him in several unpublished speeches as an example of a racist Southern politician; see "The Race Problem" (1904) and "Age of Problems" (1906), in Charles W. Chesnutt: Essays and Speeches, ed. Joseph R. McElrath, Jr., Robert C. Leitz, III, Jesse S. Crisler (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999): 196–204 and 238–252. [back]
8. William Montgomery Brown (1855–1937) was a White clergyman from Galion, Ohio, who was active in Episcopalian churches in Ohio and served as a bishop for Arkansas from 1899 to 1912. He supported segregation and publicly condoned lynching as self-defense against the threat posed to White women by Black men. His February 15, 1904, speech in Boston, MA was particularly notorious; see "Great Sensation Caused by Rev. W. A. [sic] Brown's Defense of Lynching," The Bucyrus Evening Telegraph, February 19, 1904. He elaborated on his views on segregration in his 1907 book The Crucial Race Question. [back]
9. Charles William Eliot (1934–1926) was president of Harvard from 1869 to 1909, and a leader in education reform in the US. He was in favor of education for all, but in February 1904 at a meeting in New York City, as a featured speaker alongside Booker T. Washington, he made clear he was in favor of racial segregation and thought that Whites and Blacks alike preferred it. See "President Eliot and Dr. Washington on the Race Question," The Outlook 76, no. 8 (Feburary 20, 1904): 439–440. [back]
