Charles W. Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, 10 June 1902
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CHAS. W. CHESNUTT,
ATTORNEY-AT-LAW,
1005 WILLIAMSON BUILDING.
You will want these letters—! 6/13
224-C03
Cleveland, O. June 10, 1902.
Booker T. Washington, Esq.,
Tuskegee, Ala.
My dear Mr. Washington:
I am in receipt of your note , making inquiry about the Wimadaughsis Club, which wishes you to lecture for them.1 It is a club b[?]composed of very nice ladies, the wives of business and professional men, not perhaps of the very wealthy class but people of culture and standing. They have no club house but hold their meetings, as a rule, at the homes of the members. I have myself had the honor of reading before this club, and I should say that if you were coming up this way as I understand from my daughter you are in October, you could very consistently give them a talk without any injury and some possible benefit to your general work. They sometimes get high priced talent to read to them—I know they had F. Hopkinson Smith once and paid him I believe a hundred dollars—and you could safely charge them any reasonable price.2 I do not know the occasion of your visit in October,3 but I have no doubt that if the fact were made known that you might be had, that there are other influential bodies here that would be glad to have you address them. I have been told by Rabbi Gries of the popular Jewish Temple of this city4 and by Dr. Morgan Wood of the popular Pilgrim church,5 that they have heretofore tried, unsuccessfully, to have you visit the city. You might round up a lot of them and make a pronounced local impression to supplement the
CHAS. W. CHESNUTT,
ATTORNEY-AT-LAW,
1005 WILLIAMSON BUILDING.
CLEVELAND, O.
-2-
general influence which your name and achievements exert upon the public mind. If there is anything I can do in this connection, pray do not hesitate to command me.
Correspondent: Booker T. Washington (1856–1913), one of the most well-known Black activists of the early 20th century, was born into slavery in Virginia. In 1881, he became the president of what would become the Tuskegee Institute, advocating widely as a speaker and writer for technical education for Blacks, whose entry into American industry and business leadership he believed to be the road to equality. His political power was significant, but because he frequently argued for compromise with White Southerners, including on voting rights, he was also criticized by other Black activists, especially by W. E. B. Du Bois.
1. Wimodaughsis clubs (a coinage abbreviating wives-mothers-daughters-sisters) were founded in various parts of the country in the 1890s, among many other women's clubs. While records for a Cleveland chapter could not be located, there was a chapter in nearby Lorain, Ohio, founded in 1896. It is likely that Chesnutt is referring to this organization, part of the Lakeside Federation of Women's Clubs, which also included Cleveland organizations. [back]
2. Francis Hopkinson Smith (1838–1915) was a White fiction writer, painter, and civil engineer who wrote several popular novels in the 1890s. [back]
3. Booker T. Washington visited Ohio in November of 1902 and spoke in Cleveland on the 20th at Adelbert College (formerly Western Reserve College, later Case Western Reserve University); see Cleveland Gazette, November 15, 1902: 6. [back]
4. Rabbi Moses Gries (1868–1918) led Cleveland's Temple congregation (Tifereth Israel) from 1892 to 1917 as a Reformed Rabbi. He was politically progressive and interested in interfaith connections and in education; Chesnutt read excerpts from his stories at the temple in November 1900 (see "Introduction to Temple Course Reading," Charles W. Chesnutt: Essays and Speeches, ed. Joseph R. McElrath, Jr., Robert C. Leitz, III, Jesse S. Crisler [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999]: 136–139). [back]
5. Rev. Morgan Wood (life dates not known) served as the minister at Cleveland's Plymouth Congregrational Church (then at Perry and Prospect St.) in 1902—not at Pilgrim Congregational Church, as Chesnutt assumes. Both were founded in the 1850s, but Plymouth Congregational had a more pronounced background in abolitionism. Wood only served as minister of Plymouth Church during 1902. [back]
