Charles W. Chesnutt to W. E. B. Du Bois, 14 April 1931
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11-17-107
CHAS W. CHESNUTT
HELEN C. MOORE
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 Colophon article in the Crisis.1 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.
My health is not as good as it might be, but is improving as the season opens up. Mrs. Chesnutt had a delightful trip to New York, in the course of which she met Mrs. Du Bois and enjoyed her society very much.
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. The essay, titled "Post Bellum, Pre-Harlem," appeared in the February 1931 issue of The Colophon. 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]
