Charles W. Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, 1 January 1908
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CHAS. W. CHESNUTT
1105 WILLIAMSON BUILDING
CLEVELAND, O.
Jan. 1, 19071
Said would call to your attention1/4 J.F.A.2 My dear Dr. Washington:—
I received your long and interesting letter. I shall be glad the thresh the ballot proposition over with you sometime.3 As to the ballot, the importance of a thing is not to be measured by the number of times you do it. Some of the most important & vital things of life are done only once. A man is born only once, but on that act depends his whole life; he dies only once, which ends all his hopes & fears & usefulness. He marries only a few times.
The importance of the ballot is to me a paramount element of citizenship. A man can earn his daily bread easier and bank more money with it than without it. You argue the question as though the Negro must choose between voting & eating. He ought to do both, and he can do both better ‸together than he can do either alone. It is not the act of voting I speak of—it is the right of every citizen to have some part in the choice of those who rule him, and the only way he can express
that choice is at the polls. It is just as effective if he votes once in five years as once a day. Would you maintain for a moment that the economic conditions in the South, which crush the Negro & drive away white immigration, would continue to exist if the Negroes could vote, and their votes were directed by intelligent leadership? If they could vote, and you with your power of leadership, would direct their votes in the right channel, do you believe their condition would not be materially improved? I do, and you do. It is not all of life to eat or to put money in the bank, but, as I say, a free man can do both of those things better than a mere praedial serf,4 yoked to the mule, with no concern in life but his belly & his back. If the colored people ever expect to cut any figure in this Republic they must not pitch their ideals too low; tho their feet must of course rest upon the earth, it should not be forbidden to them to lift their eyes to the Hills.5
Wishing you a Happy & prosperous New Year,
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. Misdated as January 1, 1907. This letter answers Booker T. Washington's letter from December 6, 1907, which invited Chesnutt to "thrash this out." An unlocated draft version of letter appears in Helen Chesnutt's Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1952), 205–206. [back]
2. Jeremiah Frank Armstrong (1877–1946), known by his middle name, was the first Black student to graduate from Cornell College 1900. He was chief assistant to Emmett J. Scott (1873–1957), Booker T. Washington's personal secretary and main advisor, from 1903 to 1908. He left to attend medical school and in 1912 began to practice as a physician in Chicago. [back]
3. Chesnutt addressed the question of the franchise and suppression of the Black vote in the South often, including in his 1903 essay "The Disfranchisement of the Negro." [back]
4. Praedial, also predial, is a legal term that means "of the land" or "pertaining to the land." Chesnutt also uses the term in his 1899 story "Mars Jeems's Nightmare", distinguishing "predial" from "proprietary" in reference to land. [back]
5. An allusion to Psalm 121:1, "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help." (King James Version) In the draft version of this letter, Chesnutt uses the more generic phrase "it should not be forbidden to them to lift their eyes to the stars" (Helen Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1952], 205–206). [back]
