Charles W. Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, 28 December 1910
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CHAS. W. CHESNUTT
1105 WILLIAMSON BUILDING
CLEVELAND, O.
Cleveland, Ohio, December 28, 1910.
Dr. Booker T. Washington,
Tuskegee, Alabama.
My dear Dr. Washington:-
I wish to thank you very much for the handsome and characteristic calendar which you were good enough to send me, and which reached me in excellent condition. It conveys a sentiment which should be taken to heart by everyone that is privileged to receive it. I shall give it a place of honor in my library, and refer to it whenever I feel in a pessimistic mood.
My son Edwin1 tells me that he likes his place with you, and finds the surroundings congenial and inspiring. I hope you are making him useful and that his usefulness will increase.
We keep track of your movements through the newspapers.2 Mrs. Chesnutt3 and Helen4 join me in wishing you a New Year equally as successful as your past career.
Cordially yours, Chas. W. ChesnuttTo note
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. Edwin Jackson Chesnutt (1883—1939) was the third child of Charles and Susan Chesnutt. Born in North Carolina, he spent his childhood in Cleveland, Ohio, graduated from Harvard University in 1905, and decided not to remain abroad after an extended stay in France in 1906. Instead, he trained and worked as a stenographer, including at the Tuskegee Institute from 1910–1912. After obtaining a degree in dentistry at Northwestern University in 1917, he became a dentist in Chicago. [back]
2. Booker T. Washington remained a well-known and influential Black public figure in the early 1910s. Both the Black press and the mainstream newspapers regularly reported on his speaking engagements, although criticism of his conservatism among Black activists was also intensifying. [back]
3. 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]
4. Helen Maria Chesnutt (1880–1969) was Chesnutt's second child. She earned degrees from Smith College and Columbia University, taught Latin (including to Langston Hughes) at Cleveland's Central High School for more than four decades starting in 1904, co-authored a Latin textbook, The Road to Latin, in 1932, and served on the executive committee of the American Philological Association in 1920. She became her father's literary executor and first biographer. [back]
