Charles W. Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, 8 June 1904
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CHAS. W. CHESNUTT
1005 WILLIAMSON BUILDING
CLEVELAND, O.
June 8, 1904.
Dr. Booker T. Washington,
Tuskegee, Ala.
My dear Dr. Washington:-
Replying to your favor of recent date, enclosing Mr. Ogden's letter,1 which I return herewith, I am glad to see that he is following up the clues concerning Mr. Thomas.2 He has the means, and if he has the inclination he can doubtless find out all about that interesting if not admirable person.
I note and appreciate what you say concerning my Washington address.3 I also note, on looking over Mr. Ogden's letter, that you are bringing your influence and that of your friends to bear directly upon problems of the nkind which to most Northern men are merely abstract matters.
I really do not know what can be done in the matter of Thomas's book. Publishers seem to be out for the money and to have very little concern about how they get it. As long as the public eagerly welcome matter defamatory of the Negro and are not at all eager for matter to his credit, I presume the publishers will supply them with what they wish. I hope to see the time when there will be a sufficient number of colored men of influence and standing to make it unprofitable to slight or abuse the race. When that time comes colored people will receive not only their rights, but the courtesies due ‸to them as well as to other citizens.
Sincerely yours, Chas. W. ChesnuttCorrespondent: 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. Robert Curtis Ogden (1836–1913) was a prominent White businessman from Philadelphia involved with the Wanamaker department stores, and an influential philanthropist advocating for education in the South. He served on the Southern Education Board, organized annual tours to Southern schools beginning in 1901, and was a trustee at the Hampton Institute in Virginia (1894–1913) as well as at the Tuskegee Institute (1901–1913, serving as president of the Board until 1907). A major supporter and correspondent of Booker T. Washington, he asked Washington for information about William Hannibal Thomas in the spring of 1904, and Washington passed Ogden's letter on to Chesnutt, who sent Ogden a detailed report of his 1901 research into Thomas, which he had sent to Walter Hines Page and Booker T. Washington in May of 1901. [back]
2. William Hannibal Thomas (1843–1835) was the Black author of The American Negro: What He Was, What He is, and What He May Become, published by Macmillan in 1901. Chesnutt, one among many Black activists who criticized Thomas's book, researched Thomas's academic, legal, and personal records, and urged Macmillan to withdraw the book from publication. Chesnutt discussed the book at the end of "The White and the Black" in March 1901 and reviewed it in detail in "A Defamer of His Race" in April 1901. When Thomas Nelson Page drew on Thomas's dubious evidence in his three-part series "The Negro: The Southerner's Problem," published in the spring of 1904 in McClure's Magazine, Chesnutt shared his research and his correspondence with Macmillan with the philanthropist Robert C. Ogden. [back]
3. Chesnutt is referring to his speech "The Elements of Citizenship" at the Washington, D. C., Bethel Literary and Historical Association on May 10, 1904. In a May 28 letter to Booker T. Washington Chesnutt mentioned that the press represented it as a critique of Booker T. Washington, and in his May 31, reply, Washington reassured Chesnutt that "I do not mind in the least any man's differing from me in a high-toned, gentlemanly way as you always do; that kind of difference is one thing, low personal abuse is another" (see Frances Keller, An American Crusade, 49). [back]
