Charles W. Chesnutt to W. E. B. Du Bois, 1928
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Comment articles, etc
[1928]
5/5/56
CHARLES W. CHESNUTT
9719 LAMONT AVENUE
CLEVELAND
Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois,
Editor The Crisis,
New York.
My dear Dr. Du Bois:—
I am writing to thank you for the article in the August "Crisis" with reference to myself. Your chacterization of me in giving the reasons why I was the recipient of the Spingarn medal this year was very gratifying to me and it evidences the rare discrimination with which, among your other talents, you are endowed.1 The portrait came out very beautifully, and I shall file that number of the Crisis among my choicest mementoes.
It may interest you to know that my daughter Helen2 brought your "The Dark Princess up here to read
during her convalescence (is that word spelled right) & told me when I got here from the West that she was greatly impressed by it; that she found it of absorbing interest and read it straight through.3
Mrs. Chesnutt4 joins me in regards to you. We both enjoying very much being with you at Los Angeles & on the way thither
Cordially 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 highest honor of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is the Spingarn Medal, awarded annually since 1915, for the highest achievement of a living African American in the preceding year. Joel Spingarn (1875—1939), a professor of literature and one of the NAACP founders, was elected board chairman of the NAACP in 1915 and served as president from 1929 to 1939. Charles Chesnutt received this award in 1928. [back]
2. Helen Maria Chesnutt (1880–1969) was Chesnutt's second child. She earned degrees from Smith College and Columbia University, taught Latin (including to Langston Hughes) at Cleveland's Central High School for more than four decades starting in 1904, co-authored a Latin textbook, The Road to Latin, in 1932, and served on the executive committee of the American Philological Association in 1920. She became her father's literary executor and first biographer. [back]
3. Du Bois's novel Dark Princess (Harcourt Brace 1928) tells the story of a Black American college student who becomes the lover of an Indian Princess. [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]
