Charles W. Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, 16 September 1912
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CHAS. W. CHESNUTT
1105 WILLIAMSON BUILDING
CLEVELAND, O.
Cleveland, Ohio, September 16, 1912.
Dr. Booker T. Washington,
Tuskegee Institute, Ala.
My dear Dr. Washington:-
I beg to acknowledge receipt of the comprehensive and admirably gotten up Negro Year Book, of which you were good enough to send me a copy.1 Please accept my thanks for this. It is a convenient and useful handbook.
Sincerely yours, Chas. W. ChesnuttCorrespondent: 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 Negro Year Book, edited by Black sociologist Monroe Nathan Work (1866–1945), was an encyclopedia of Black life published annually by the Tuskegee Institute from 1912 until 1952 (with some gaps). While Work began this project in 1908, the Negro Year Book for 1912 sent to Chesnutt was the first annual edition, a 230-page volume that sold for 25 cents (plus postage). It included demographic information that highlighted Black economic progress, but also provided lynching statistics (pages 148–149). A "Select Bibliography of the Negro" included all five of Chesnutt's books of fiction (page 206). [back]
