Booker T. Washington to Charles W. Chesnutt, 12 July 1906
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N.Y.July 12, 6 Mr. Chas W. Chestnut Williamson Building- Cleveland Ohio
Please wire me Hotel Manhattan1 European address your family.2 Am anxious for my daughter to meet them.3 She will be in London this week.4
Booker T. WashingtonCorrespondent: 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. The Hotel Manhattan (or Manhattan Hotel), opened in 1896 and demolished in the 1960s, was located at the northwest corner of Madison Avenue and 42nd Street near Grand Central Station in Manhattan. It was Booker T. Washington's preferred residence when in New York. [back]
2. In the summer of 1906, Susan Chesnutt and her daughters Helen and Dorothy took an extended trip to Europe; Chesnutt's son Edwin was already there. They met in London in early July; Edwin had found centrally located accommodations less than 10 minutes from Russell Square, at No. 2 Hunter Street. They went sightseeing in London and environs from here and met a number of American acquaintances. They left for 16 days in Paris in mid-July, returned to the U. K. in early August, and returned home at the end of August (Helen Chesnutt, Charles W. Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952], 216–222). [back]
3. Portia Washington Pittman (1883–1978) was Booker T. Washington's only child with his first wife, Fannie Smith Washington. She experienced race discrimination at Wellesley College and left after a year to attend Bradford Academy from 1902–1905. Between 1905 and 1907 she was in Berlin, studying piano under a renowned German pianist. In 1907 she married the architect Sidney Pittman. [back]
4. In July 1906, Booker T. Washington's daughter Portia (1883–1978) traveled from Berlin to London for an extended vacation. Susan Chesnutt and three of her four children had also just arrived that month. Washington asked (and received) the Chesnutt family's London address and told Portia in a letter written July 19, 1906, that he hoped she had seen the Chesnutts (Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol. 9, p. 44). Susan Chesnutt wrote to Chesnutt on July 8 (and 15), 1906: "I hear that Portia Washington is in London" and "doesn't want to go back to America" (see Pioneer, 222) but there is no record of a meeting. Both Portia and the Chesnutts were, however, friends with Black composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912), at whose residence many tourists from the Black elite met. [back]
