Charles W. Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, 23 March 1907
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CHAS. W. CHESNUTT
1105 WILLIAMSON BUILDING
CLEVELAND, O.
Cleveland, O.,
March 23, 1907.
Dr. Booker T. Washington,
Tuskegee,
Ala.
My dear Doctor Washington:-
I am in receipt of your favor of recent date, with reference to contributing toward the paying off of the mortgage on the Frederick Douglass home.1 I shall be very glad to contribute at least the sum of $25.00 to this good purpose, and will look up the name of the treasurer in some of the newspapers, and either send it to him or to you about the latter part of the month. I have had a good many calls made upon me recently, local and otherwise, and am not able to contribute very largely, but the cause is a worthy one, and ought to meet with a generous response from a number of contributors. Frederick Douglass was the most conspicuous colored man of his generation, and ably and nobly held his own among the orators of the anti-slavery agitation.2
I see that you have written a life of Frederick Douglass; I hope to have the pleasure of reading it very soon.3 I have just written to Professor Browne,4 expressing my approval of the distribution of copies of Mr. Ray Stannard Baker's article.5 I have n't seen the article, but I saw a preliminary announcement of the series.6 I told Professor Browne that I am willing to accept your opinion and Mr. Villard's, as to the advisability of distributing it in the South.7
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. Frederick Douglass (1817–1895) purchased a house he called Cedar Hill in Anacostia, a neighborhood in Washington, DC, in 1877 and lived there until his death. After his death, his widow, Helen Pitts Douglass (1838–1903), took out a mortgage to become the sole owner of the home and, in 1900, founded the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association in an effort to pay off the loan. Booker T. Washington was actively involved in the effort to fundraise for the Association in 1907–1908. [back]
2. Frederick Douglass (1817–1895) was the most prominent Black activist of the 19th century and internationally famous for his speeches and writing on behalf of Black civil rights and women's rights before and after the Civil War. Chesnutt's book-length biography, Frederick Douglass (Small, Maynard & Co, 1899) was the first to appear after Douglass's death and the first by a Black writer. [back]
3. Booker T. Washington's Frederick Douglass: A Biography (Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co., 1906) was actually published in February of 1907. [back]
4. Hugh M. Browne (1851–1923) was a Black civil rights activist, teacher, and inventor. Educated at Howard University, Princeton University, and in Europe, he taught in Liberia in the 1880s and at Black colleges in the United States from the 1890s until his retirement in 1913. He was an ally of Booker T. Washington but advocated for both academic and industrial education. He was secretary of the Committee of Twelve and corresponded with Chesnutt about Committee matters. [back]
5. Ray Stannard Baker (1870–1946) was a White journalist best known for writing about President Woodrow Wilson. Following the Atlanta Race Massacre in September 1906, he began to write about race in the American Magazine, a monthly he co-founded. He later joined the NAACP. Chesnutt read his 1907 and 1908 articles with interest and was in favor of the Committee of Twelve—a group of Black activists founded by Booker T. Washington—reprinting Baker's account of the Atlanta events. [back]
6. Ray Stannard Baker (1870–1946) published a series of five essays on the situation of Black Americans in the American Magazine from April to August 1907. The first essay was reprinted as "The Atlanta Riot" (Phillips Publishing Co., 1907) on behalf the Committee of Twelve, on the suggestion of newspaper owner and journalist Oswald Garrison Villard (1872–1949) and of Booker T. Washington, on whose guidance and contacts Baker relied in his reporting on the riot. Baker wrote a second essay series in the American Magazine in 1908, and eventually published an expanded version in book form, as Following the Color Line: An Account of Negro Citizenship in the American Democracy (Doubleday, Page & Co.1908). [back]
7. Oswald Garrison Villard (1872–1949) was a White journalist and political activist who wrote for and, after 1900, owned the New York Evening Post (until 1918) and the Nation (until 1935). A descendant of abolitionist Francis Lloyd Garrison and a liberal Democrat, he worked with many Black activists and was a founding member of the NAACP. In 1907, he proposed to the Committee of Twelve that they reprint Ray Stannard Baker's article on the 1906 Atlanta Riot. [back]
