Charles W. Chesnutt to W. E. B. Du Bois, 14 April 1931
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11-17-107
CHAS W. CHESNUTT
HELEN C. MOORE1
CHESNUTT & MOORE
SHORTHAND REPORTERS
1646 UNION TRUST BLDG.
CLEVELAND
April 14, 1931
Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois,
Editor, The Crisis,
New York City.
My dear Dr. Du Bois:
I have your letter of April 10th with reference to the republication of my Colophonarticle in the Crisis.2 I am very glad to learn that you liked the article, and have no objection whatever to your reproducing it in accordance with your quotation from the letter of the Colophon editors.3
My health is not as good as it might be, but is improving as the season opens up. Mrs. Chesnutt4 had a delightful trip to New York, in the course of which she met Mrs. Du Bois5and enjoyed her society very much.6
With all good wishes, Sincerely yours, Chas. W. Chesnutt.Correspondent: 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).
1. Helen C. Moore (1881–1963) was a White shorthand reporter who began working with Chesnutt in 1918. Moore graduated from Cleveland Law College in 1925, earned her Bachelor of Laws from Baldwin-Wallace, and later, at the age of 58, obtained a Bachelor of Arts from Ohio State University. During the last years of Chesnutt's life, she managed their firm, Chesnutt & Moore, and upon his death in 1932, she founded her own firm, Helen Moore & Associates ("Memorial Resolutions," Journal of the Cleveland Bar Association 35 [1964]: 81–100). Most of their surviving correspondence consists of summer updates during periods when either she or Chesnutt were away from the office on their summer vacations. [back]
2. The essay, titled "Post Bellum, Pre-Harlem," appeared in Colophon, Part 5, in 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. It was reprinted in the Crisis Vol.40 (June 1931) and later by Elmer Adler in his collection Breaking into Print (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1937). [back]
3. The Colophon: A Book Collector's Quarterly was a high-quality, high-cost periodical edited by Elmer Adler (1884–1962), a book collector and graphic designer. Published in its original large format only from 1930 until 1935 (and only sporadically between 1935 and 1948), it included Chesnutt's essay "Post Bellum, Pre-Harlem" in Part 5 (February 1931). The Colophon was available only by subscription ($15 a year), and at its most successful printed in runs of 3,000 copies (parts 5-12). [back]
4. Susan Perry Chesnutt (1861–1940) was from a well-established Black family in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and worked as a teacher at Fayetteville's Howard School before marrying Chesnutt. They were married from 1878 until his death in 1932 and had four children: Ethel, Helen, Edwin, and Dorothy. Susan led an active life in Cleveland. [back]
5. Nina Gomer Du Bois (1870–1950) was a Black woman, originally from Iowa. She met Du Bois at Wilberforce University in Wilberforce, Ohio, and they married in 1896. [back]
6. The Chesnutts were in New York City in late March of 1931, visiting Susan's sister Mary Perry McCracken (1878–1958) and her husband Richard ("Social News," The New York Age, Saturday, April 4, 1931,p.2). [back]
