W. E. B. Du Bois to Charles W. Chesnutt, 8 September 1924
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September 8, 1924.
Mr. Charles W. Chestnutt[sic],
9719 Lamont Avenue,
Cleveland, Ohio.
My dear Mr. Chestnutt[sic]:
Will you act as one of the judges in the Crisis Fiction Contest?1 We will read over the bulk of the stories submitted and send you about a half dozen or fewer of the best for your judgement. I trust you will be able to do this.
Again, you promised to look among your manuscripts and pick us out[?] a story for publication in the Crisis.2 Will you do this at your earliest convenience? I shall appreciate it.
Very sincerely yours, WEBD/PFCorrespondent: 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, 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. In 1925, The Crisis held its inaugural contest for what were initially called the Amy Spingarn Prizes in literature and art. The three fiction prizes (for $100, $50, and $20) were announced in August 1925 and printed in The Crisis in the following months. Chesnutt evaluated submissions, as did White writers H. G. Wells (1866–1946), Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951), and Mary White Ovington (1865–1951). Chesnutt again judged stories for the prize in 1926, alongside White writers Ernest Poole (1880–1950) and Otelia Cromwell (1874–1972) [back]
2. "The Marked Tree" was the third of four short stories by Chesnutt published in The Crisis, in two installments (vol. 29, no. 2 [December 1924]: 59–64 and vol. 29, no. 3 [January 1925]: 110–113).[back]
