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I have your letters concerning the Panafrican Congress. The travel program is very alluring and I have no doubt the congress will be extremely interesting. However, it is entirely out of the question for me to attend it. Neither my health nor my financial condition would enable me to make such a trip.2
As to others who might wish to participate, I confess I am at a loss to suggest any names. Several whom I might have thought of went to Europe on such a trip last summer, among them Councilman Tom Fleming,3 who, unless all signs fail, will soon start for a long vacation in a state resort at Columbus.4 My health has been such this winter that I have n't been able to get around among people and make inquiries. Perhaps Harry Davis could make some suggestions.5
Thanks for the kind words in your other letter about the new edition of "The Conjure Woman". Major Spingarn certainly pays the book and the author a very high compliment.6 Whether any others of my books will be reprinted will depend somewhat, I imagine, on the public's reaction to this new edition. I am at present unable to say anything about the new novel. I am writing it, but it drags somewhat.7 The "Negro" novels get rottener and rottener. "Black Sadie" was bad enough, but the worst I've seen so far is "The Blacker the Berry", I think the title is. Van Vechten's "Nigger Heaven" was a Sunday School tract besides many of them. I am perfectly sure I could n't compete with them in vileness, and that seems to be what is wanted.8
I see Walter White's9 new novel is out and I have ordered a copy of it. In looking through my manuscripts I find a short story which I enclose and which you might find available for The Crisis.10 It is not a race problem story, although it has an element that might appeal to the author of "The Dark Princess".11 You are at liberty to use it if you find it available.
My family all join me in regards to you and Mrs. DuBois.12
Cordially yours, Chas. W. Chesnutt. CWC:LKCorrespondent: 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).