Charles W. Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, 12 July 1906
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Form No. 1.
THE WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY.
―INCORPORATED―
23,000 OFFICES IN AMERICA. CABLE SERVICE TO ALL THE WORLD.1
NUMBER
28
SENT BY
Em
REC'D BY
Id
CHECK
pd
Received at Hotel Manhattan.2
July 12th, 1906
Dated Cleveland Ohio 12
To Booker T. Washington
Mrs Chestnutts address3
number two hunter st
London W. C. England4
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. For readability, the remainder of the telegraph form is not transcribed at the top of the letter but is included in this footnote as unformatted text. The form can be seen in its entirety in the accompanying image of the letter. The text of the remainder of the form is as follows: "This Company TRANSMITS and DELIVERS messages only on conditions limiting its liability, which have been assented to by the sender of the following message. Errors can be guarded against only by repeating a message back to the sending station for comparison, and the company will not hold itself liable for errors or delays in transmission or delivery of Unrepeated Messages, beyond the amount of tolls paid thereon, nor in any case where the claim is not presented in writing within sixty days after the message is filed with the Company for transmission. This is an UNREPEATED MESSAGE, and is delivered by request of the sender, under the conditions named above. ROBERT C. CLOWRY, President and General Manager." [back]
2. 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]
3. Susan Perry Chesnutt (1861–1940) was from a well-established Black family in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and worked as a teacher at Fayetteville's Howard School before marrying Chesnutt. They were married from 1878 until his death in 1932 and had four children: Ethel, Helen, Edwin, and Dorothy. Susan led an active life in Cleveland. [back]
4. 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]
