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Charles W. Chesnutt to Walter White, 1 March 1930

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  CHAS. W. CHESNUTT HELEN C. MOORE CHESNUTT & MOORE SHORTHAND REPORTERS 1646 UNION TRUST BLDG. CLEVELAND March 1, 1930 Mr. Walter F. White, 90 Edgecombe Avenue, New York, N. Y. My dear Walter:

I see from a newspaper item that you have been raised to the rank of the immortals, like Rosseau, Voltaire, Boccaccio, Theodore Dreisser[sic] and others too numerous to mention, by having a couple of your books banned by the Boston censors.1 If this statement is true, I hope it will make them sell better than ever.

I presume you read the article in the January Bookman by Mr. John Chamberlain, on Negro writers. I don't know the gentleman's standing as a critic, though I understand he is on the staff of the New York Times Literary Review, but I am glad to see that he gives you and me perhaps the highest place among the colored writers.2

I am awfully sorry that Houghton Mifflin Company stopped the publication of my books, as the "uncovering" of them and of me by Carl Van Vechten3 and others following him might have resulted in the sale of a good many more of them. The new "Conjure Woman" has done very well indeed, and, according to the publishers, has quite justified its reissue, and I hope to persuade them to bring out a new edition of "The House Behind the Cedars".4

Give my regards to Mrs. White, whom I am still hoping to meet. I should probably have been in New York this winter, but the decline in the stock market knocked off a large part of the value of my small holdings, and I have felt too poor to spend the money.5 However, I will get around to it some time,

Cordially yours, Chas. W. Chesnutt CWC:ES



Correspondent: Walter Francis White (1893–1955) was a civil rights activist and writer. He began working at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1918, at its New York City headquarters, as assistant to James Weldon Johnson, the Association's first Black Executive Secretary. He investigated lynchings and riots, sometimes passing for White, and he became Executive Secretary in 1930. He helped desegregate the armed forces after WWII and under his leadership the NAACP established its Legal Defense Fund. He nominally remained executive secretary until his death in 1955.



1. Chesnutt may be referring to an article in the Baltimore Afro-American, which reported that "Herbert W. Fison, white, librarian of the Malden [Boston] public library, wrote last week that books by Walter White, N.A.A.C.P. secretary, are not worthy of being added to the library." The article identified the banned books as White’s novel Fire and Flint (1924) and his account of lynching, Rope and Faggot (1929), which the report described as "the most voluminous and authentic book on lynching in the English language" ("Walter White's Books Banned in Boston," Afro-American [March 1, 1930]: 11).[back]

2. In "The Negro As Writer" (The Bookman, 70 [February 1930]: 603–611), John Chamberlain (1902–1995) discusses Chesnutt's fiction at length, considering his short stories and three published novels. Chamberlain also discusses writers of the 1920s, noting that "The Chesnutt tradition is carried on by Walter White, who has gone to the South for most of his materials."[back]

3. Carl Van Vechten (1880–1964) was a photographer, novelist, and music and drama critic, an influential figure in New York literary circles in the 1920s, and a patron of the Harlem Renaisssance. He was also a collector of books on Black Americana.[back]

4. In late 1929, Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. announced a new edition of The Conjure Woman. It went on sale at the beginning of 1930.[back]

5. Between the initial Wall Street Crash in late 1929 and the mid-1931 banking crises, most U.S. stocks lost ninety percent or more of their value.[back]