Charles W. Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, 1 March 1910
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CHAS. W. CHESNUTT
1005 WILLIAMSON BUILDING
CLEVELAND, O.
Cleveland, Ohio, March 1, 1910.
Dr. Booker T. Washington,
Tuskegee Institute,
Alabama.
My dear Dr. Washington:-
They are very formidable names to which you ask permission to add mine, which would be a very small candle among so many electric lights.1 However, I suspect there will be enough names in between to soften the disparity and I am very willing indeed that you should use my name for any purpose which will further the interests and enlarge the usefulness of your wonderful institution, and release you in any measure from a kind of activity which I should think, in the long run, would wear upon the nerves of even the most effective natural born money-raiser.
Sincerely yours, Chas. W. Chesnutt. "Yes"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 principal 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. On February 23, 1910, Booker T. Washington asked Chesnutt if he might use his name along with the names of such luminaries as President William Howard Taft (1857–1930), former President Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), and wealthy Tuskegee Trustee Seth Low (1850–1916).[back]
