Charles W. Chesnutt to W. E. B Du Bois, 16 July 1909
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CHAS. W. CHESNUTT
1105 WILLIAMSON BUILDING
CLEVELAND, O.
Cleveland, Ohio, July 16, 1909.
Dr. W. E. B. DuBois,
c/o Wilberforce University,1
Wilberforce, Ohio.
Dear Doctor DuBois:-
1/55/35
Replying to your kind invitation to attend the annual meeting of the Niagara Movement2 at Sea Isle City, I am not able to say just at the moment whether I shall be able to attend or not.3 My vacation plans are not yet completed and they may take me in an entirely different direction, if I am in the country at all. Mrs. Chesnutt4 was at Atlantic City a couple of weeks this spring, and while she had rooms engaged for August she has I believe changed her mind.5 If she changes it again it is more than likely that she will come in the direction of Atlantic City, and in that event I will probably show up some time during the proceedings.
Hoping that in any event you will have a rousing meeting and a good time, I remain
Sincerely yours, Chas. W. ChesnuttCorrespondent: 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. Wilberforce University is a historically Black college (HBCU) founded by the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in 1856 in rural Southwestern Ohio. W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) was professor of Classics at Wilberforce from 1894 to 1896, but left for an instructor position in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania after obtaining his doctorate from Harvard. Although consistently critical of Wilberforce in later years, Du Bois spent the summer of 1909 (May–August) at Wilberforce, shortly after his former colleague from the classics department, William S. Scarborough (1852–1926) became its president (1908–1920). [back]
2. The Niagara Movement, seen as the forerunner of the NAACP, was initiated in 1905 by a group of Black activists who disagreed with Booker T. Washington's accommodationism. They fought for equal civil rights, specifically voting rights, and against legal and political discrimination. Under the leadership of W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter, the Niagara Movement was most active from 1905 to 1908. After the smaller annual meetings in 1909 and 1910 at Sea Isle City, New Jersey,, Du Bois canceled the 1911 meeting and the group effectively merged with the NAACP. Membership peaked at 400 around 1908. Chesnutt was a member and attended the annual meeting at Oberlin in 1908, where he delivered a speech (cf. Helen Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952], 229). [back]
3. Sea Isle City, New Jersey, is a small beach resort 30 miles south of the more famous resort, Atlantic City, New Jersey. The Niagara Movement held its last two annual meetings there (August 15–18, 1909; August 27–30, 1910). Chesnutt does not seem to have attended the 1909 meeting. He may have attended the 1910 conference, since he, his wife, and his daughters Dorothy and Helen spent the month of August 1910 in Sea Isle City. See Helen Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952), 238. [back]
4. Susan Perry Chesnutt (1861–1940) was from a well-established Black family in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and worked as a teacher at Fayetteville's Howard School before marrying Chesnutt. They were married from 1878 until his death in 1932 and had four children: Ethel, Helen, Edwin, and Dorothy. Susan led an active life in Cleveland. [back]
5. Atlantic City, New Jersey, is a major resort town on the East Coast, which boomed in the early 1900s. Tourist establishments had just begun to be segregated in 1900, and affluent Black families vacationed in Black-owned hotels and cottages, and frequented the designated Black beach. Susan Chesnutt visited at least four times with her daughters (1908, 1909, 1912, 1915). Chesnutt joined the family for a month-long stay at Sea Isle City, New Jersey, after his stroke in 1910, which seems to have included trips to nearby Atlantic City. [back]
