Charles W. Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, 23 May 1902
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CHAS. W. CHESNUTT,
ATTORNEY-AT-LAW,
1005 WILLIAMSON BUILDING,
CLEVELAND, O.
Miss Thorn
May 23, 1902.
Booker T. Washington, Esq.,
Tuskegee Institute,
Tuskegee, Ala.
My dear Mr. Washington:—
My daughter Helen1 has written me concerning a Miss Agnes Farrell,2 a student at Smith College3 and a friend of hers, who is very much interested in the educational work in the South and thinks she would like to teach there. She will graduate from Smith College in June. I think she would like to teach in a colored school. I presume ‸that under the Tuskegee system there would vbe no place for her there, but perhaps you can suggest to me some place or person to which ‸or to whom she could make application for a position as teacher.4
I see a great many fine things said from time to time with reference to your autobiography,5 and I note that you are soon to bring out another book; I hope it may prove as successful as the last.6 I have seen in the papers photographs of your very handsome new library,7 and I get very enthusiastic letters from my daughter Ethel from time to time concerning the work at Tuskegee, which has always my very best wishes.
Cordially 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 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. 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 Central High School for more than four decades, co-authored a Latin textbook, The Road to Latin, and served on the executive committee of the American Philological Association in 1920. She was her father's literary executor and first biographer.[back]
2. Agnes Farrell, from Utica, NY, graduated from Smith College in 1902, a year after Helen and Ethel Chesnutt.[back]
3. Smith College, in Northampton, MA, opened in 1875 as an elite women's college. Ethel and Helen Chesnutt began to attend in the fall of 1897 and graduated in June of 1901, housed off campus in private accommodations. Along with Otelia Cromwell (1874-1972), class of 1900, they were the first Black students to enroll.[back]
4. The Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), in Tuskegee, Alabama, evolved from the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers, founded in 1881, with Booker T. Washington as its principal. It became a leading educational institution for Blacks in the South, emphasizing teacher training and industrial education. Chesnutt, who had himself been the principal of a Black normal school in the early 1880s, first visited Tuskegee in February 1901, and remained well-informed about and personally connected with the institution all his life.[back]
5. Booker T. Washington's memoir Up from Slavery was serialized in The Outlook from November 3, 1900 to February 23, 1901 and then published in book form.[back]
6. Booker T. Washington's "Character Building," a collection of speeches delivered at Tuskegee, was announced in various newspapers in the spring of 1902 (e.g. New York Times, 5 April 1902, p. 22) and published in June by Doubleday, Page & Co.[back]
7. The Carnegie Library at the Tuskegee Institute, a much-photographed showpiece, was completed in 1901, and remained the Institute's library until 1932. Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919), who funded public libraries throughout the United States, was a major donor to Tuskegee.[back]
