Charles W. Chesnutt to Walter White, 15 November 1930
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November 15, 1930
Walter White, Esq.,
Acting Secretary, N.A.A.C.P.,1
New York City.
My dear Walter:
I am writing an article for the Colophon on "My First Book". In the letter asking me to write the article, Mr. Adler2 of the Colophon mentioned your name.3 Perhaps I have to thank you for the request to write the article.
I have written for the Clevelander, which is the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce magazine, an article on "The Negro in Cleveland", of which I will have some copies in a day or two and will send you one.
I have your letter of September 6th, with reference to the proposed campaign of the N.A.A.C.P., "to secure and protect the Negro's constitutional rights," of which the first point to be taken up is the apportionment of school funds.4 It is a very serious and important matter, and I hope you will be as successful with it as with the defeat of Senators McCulloch5 and Allen6. It was regrettable in a way that in order to defeat McCulloch it seems to have been necessary to defeat nearly the whole Republican ticket in Ohio, but the party has been courting just such a situation, and except for several of my good friends who got caught in the landslide, I have no regrets.
I am sorry that I did not see you on your last trip to Cleveland, but hope I may have that privilege when you come here again.7
Sincerely yours, CWC:ESCorrespondent: 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. 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 Negroes. In 1910, the organization adopted its current name and began publication of a monthly journal, The Crisis, under editor W. E. B. Du Bois. Chesnutt's involvement with the NAACP extended over many years, and included attending conferences, presiding at NAACP events in Cleveland, publishing four stories and one essay in The Crisis (1912, 1915, 1924, 1926, and 1930), and being awarded in 1928 the organization's highest honor, the Spingarn Medal.[back]
2. Elmer Adler (1884–1962) was a book collector and graphic designer as well as the editor of The Colophon: A Book Collector's Quarterly.[back]
3. The article, titled "Post Bellum-Pre-Harlem," appeared in Colophon February 1931. In preparation, according to his daughter, Chesnutt "exhumed his scrap books [and] reread old letters" (see Helen M. Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line [Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1952], 311.[back]
4. Having focused on racial violence since its founding, with a grant from The Garland Fund in 1925, the NAACP turned its attention to educational inequality. By 1930, the organization had developed a plan for lawsuits in several states challenging the underfunding of Black schools as a violation of the equal protection clause.[back]
5. Roscoe Conkling McCulloch (1880–1958) was an Ohio State Representative (1915–1921), unsuccessful Republican candidate in the 1920 gubernatorial election, and attorney in Canton, Ohio. In 1929, McCulloch was appointed to fill an Ohio State Senate seat left vacant by the death of the incumbent. He failed to keep the seat when he lost a special election a month later. In his September 6, 1930, letter to Walter White, Chesnutt shared his views on McCulloch and his reccomendation that the NAACP not support McCulloch.[back]
6. Henry J. Allen (1868–1950), a Republican, was Governor of Kansas (1919–1923), and in 1929 appointed to the U.S. Senate to fill a vacancy caused by the incumbent's resignation to become the U.S. Vice President. Allen was defeated in the primaries of 1930. The NAACP opposed Allen because he had supported the nomination of John J. Parker for U.S. Supreme Court. In his letter of September 6, 1930, Chesnutt congratulates White on blocking Parker's nomination.[back]
7. Walter White was in Ohio in October 1930, meeting with the officers of the Cleveland and Cincinnati branches of the NAACP.[back]
