Charles W. Chesnutt to W. E. B. Du Bois, 1 March 1916
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CHAS. W. CHESNUTT
1105 WILLIAMSON BUILDING
CLEVELAND O
London Library
Cleveland, Ohio, March 1st, 1916.
Dr. W. E. D. DuBois,
Editor The Crisis,1
Seventy-fifth Avenue,
New York City, N.Y.
2/7/100
My dear Dr. DuBois:-
Replying to your letter of February 11th, I am sending you by Parcel Post today one copy each of "The Wife of His Youth"2 and "The Marrow of Tradition,"3 two of my books of which I happen to have copies on hand, and which I think are the most "race-problemish" of my writings. I like to hope, in view of what the one hundred books which you have undertaken to collect have cost somebody, that the lending library in London will accomplish some good.4
Yours sincerely, Chas. W. Chesnutt Dictated by C. W. C.Correspondent: 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. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) began in February 1909, with a Committee on the Negro and "The Call," a statement protesting lawlessness against Black people. In 1910, the organization adopted its current name and in 1912 began publication of a monthly journal, The Crisis, which was edited by W. E. B. Du Bois from 1912 to 1944. Chesnutt's involvement with the NAACP extended over many years, and included serving on its General Committee, attending conferences, presiding at NAACP events in Cleveland, publishing four stories and two essays in The Crisis (1912, 1915, 1924, 1926, 1930, and 1931), and being awarded in 1928 the organization's highest honor, the Spingarn Medal. [back]
2. The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line was published by Houghton, Mifflin & Company in December 1899. It was reprinted once in 1901; in 1924, the printing plates were melted down because of low demand. [back]
3. The Marrow of Tradition was published by Houghton, Mifflin & Company in October 1901. The novel was a thinly veiled account of the Wilmington Massacre of 1898, a White supremacist coup that overthrew an interracial city government, targeted Black elected officials, killed between 60 and 300 Black citizens, and terrorized several thousand who fled the city and never returned. [back]
4. In early 1916, W. E. B. Du Bois requested autographed books from Black authors of fiction and nonfiction that dealt with race relations and anti-Black racism in the United States on behalf of the newly organized library of the British-based Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, Britain's major abolitionist society in the 19th and early 20th century (still active today as the Anti-Slavery International). Chesnutt and others, including James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938), Kelly Miller (1863–1939), and Benjamin G. Brawley (1882–1939), donated copies of their books. [back]
