Charles W. Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, 10 May 1901
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758 Rose Building.
Cleveland, O.,May 10, 1901.
Booker T. Washington, Esq.,
Tuskegee.
Dear Sir:-
I take pleasure in enclosing page 1 of the report which I have made in reference to William Hannibal Thomas,1 which it seems I omitted in the copy sent to you2.
Very sincerely yours, Chas. W. Chesnutt.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. William Hannibal Thomas (1843–1835) was the Black author of The American Negro: What He Was, What He is, and What He May Become, published by Macmillan in 1901. Chesnutt, one among many Black activists who criticized Thomas's book, researched Thomas's academic, legal, and personal records, and urged Macmillan to withdraw the book from publication. Chesnutt discussed the book at the end of "The White and the Black" in March 1901 and reviewed it in detail in "A Defamer of His Race" in April 1901. When Thomas Nelson Page drew on Thomas's dubious evidence in his three-part series "The Negro: The Southerner's Problem," published in the spring of 1904 in McClure's Magazine, Chesnutt shared his research and his correspondence with Macmillan with the philanthropist Robert C. Ogden. [back]
2. Chesnutt's privately circulated, unpublished report, based on his inquiries into William Hannibal Thomas' records, was entitled "In Re Hannibal Thomas, Author of The American Negro." [back]
