Charles W. Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, 27 October 1904
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CHAS. W. CHESNUTT
1005 WILLIAMSON BUILDING.
CLEVELAND, O.
October 27, 1904.
Dr. Booker T. Washington,
Tuskegee, Ala.
My dear Mr. Washington:-
As I learn that you are to be in this city on January 11th, to lecture in the Temple Course, I should consider it an honor if you could make my house your stopping place as long as you are in the city.1
One of my friends, Mr. Virgil P. Kline, at the head of one of the largest law firms of the city, and counsel for the Standard Oil Company and Mr. Rockefeller, is very desirous of meeting you, and knowing of our acquaintance has asked me to extend to you an invitation to dine with him during your stay in the city. He has a beautiful home and influential acquaintance, and although a Democrat (of the Gold variety), is profoundly interested in the race problem. If your engagements will permit, I am sure you would enjoy meeting him.2
Mrs. Washington3 passed through the city recently on her way to Oberlin4 and called at the house where we were living when you were last here; but as we had moved several months before, to a point some distance from that place her stay was not long enough to enable her to reach us.5 Mrs. Chesnutt and I regret very much that she missed us and hope that we may have the pleasure of seeing her on some other occasion.
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. Established by Rabbi Moses Gries (1868–1918), the Temple Course was a lecture series at Cleveland's synagogue, the Temple, which ran from 1896 to 1909. Booker T. Washington lectured at the Temple on January 12, 1905, in the course of a three-day stay in Cleveland, which included several other speaking engagements. [back]
2. Virgil P. Kline (1844–1917) was a prominent White lawyer in Cleveland and a long-time friend of Chesnutt's. For two years after passing the bar in 1887, Chesnutt worked out of the offices of Kline and his law firm partners. Kline represented Standard Oil for 30 years (including in their famous anti-trust court case in the 1890s) and also served as personal attorney to John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937), the head of Standard Oil. Kline was politically active in the Democratic party. [back]
3. Margaret Murray Washington (ca. 1865–1925) was an educator and social reformer. She earned her teaching degree at Fisk University, served as the Lady Principal of the Tuskegee Institute and helped expand Tuskegee programs. She became Booker T. Washington's wife after the death of his second wife and often accompanied him on his lecture tours. She helped found the organization that was to become the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC) in 1896 and became its president in 1914. [back]
4. Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, founded in 1833, was famous for its early admission of Black Americans and (as of 1837) of women. Founded by abolitionists and part of the Underground Railroad in the 1850s, it developed a reputation as one of the most progressive U.S. institutions of higher education. Many prominent Black activists gave lectures there, including Booker T. Washington beginning in 1897. Chesnutt's parents briefly resided in Oberlin in the late 1850s and early 1860s, before their return to Cleveland and then to North Carolina after the Civil War. Chesnutt spoke there in November 1908 at an early Niagara Movement conference. He also later delivered the speech "The Negro in Present-Day Fiction" there, probably in 1929. See Charles W. Chesnutt: Essays and Speeches (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 516–529. [back]
5. After relocating to Cleveland in 1884, Chesnutt's family lived in a series of rental houses (on Wilcutt Avenue, Ashland Avenue, and Florence Street), and then built a home to Chesnutt's plans at 64 Brenton Street, where they lived from May 1889 until May 1904. At that time, he purchased the house at 9719 Lamont Avenue, which continued to be owned by the Chesnutt family after his death in 1932 (see Helen Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952], 37–39, 48 and 184–185). [back]
