Charles W. Chesnutt to Albion W. Tourgée, 3 September 1895
| Textual Feature | Appearance |
|---|---|
| alterations to base text (additions or deletions) | added or deleted text |
| passage deleted with a strikethrough mark | |
| passage deleted by overwritten added text | Deleted text Added text |
| position of added text (if not added inline) | [right margin] text added in right margin; [above line] text added above the line |
| proofreading mark | ‸ |
| page number, repeated letterhead, etc. | page number or repeated letterhead |
| supplied text | [supplied text] |
| archivist note | archivist note |
8826
CHAS. W. CHESNUTT,
A little business and a good many Summer distractions of one sort or another have prevented my answering sooner your letter of some weeks since enclosing three additional certificates of stock in the BASIS.1 I have not sold the stock, but I enclose herewith a check for the $15.00 necessary to pay for same. I also enclose five of the coupons, for which please send the BASIS for one year each to the following addresses:
- A.J. Chesnutt, Fayetteville, N.C.2
- T. J. Shauter, 615 Society for Savings Building, Cleveland, O.3
- Mr. J. E. Benson, 45 Henry Street, Cleveland, O.4
- Mr. W. T. Boyd, 33 Maple Street, Cleveland, O.5
- Hon. John P. Green, 121 Quincy Street, Cleveland, O.6
I shall probably be able to add to this list in the course of time. I am not surprised that you should have felt a little disappointment at the apparent lack of zeal for the BASIS among the colored people. I think it is accounted for not by indifference to their own fate or a lack of appreciation for those who are trying to serve their best interests but by the fact that their own efforts in behalf of their race are distributed over so wide an area.7 Every step they win is by hard work, and there are many
8826
CHAS. W. CHESNUTT.7361024 SOCIETY FOR SAVINGS BLD'G.
Cleveland, O.__________189____
-2-
ways and places where they can inch their way along on a much lower plane than the high moral level on which the BASIS finds its field. Quite a number of them, realizing the fact that they are poor and that poverty is almost a crime in the United States, are doing their best to rise above that reproach. They are working along the line of their schools and churches and their own newspapers—which, though they do not begin to compare with the BASIS in literary quality, are already in the field. I see they have just secured the indictment of the proprietors of a place of amusement in Pittsburgh where discrimination was practiced against them.8 In politics they are kept on the alert to secure the few offices and appointments they are able to get. They are traveling and lecturing at home and abroad, and are securing a respectful hearing in many quarters.
I think that as the BASIS becomes more widely known, it cannot fail to take rank as an authority—as the authority—on all matters pertaining to the rights of the citizen. The colored people no quite well what their wrongs are, and can imagine in a crude way, the remedy for them. But if the BASIS can in any degree move the white people of this country from their open hostility or shameless indifference to the rights of the colored people, it will have justified its existence and won the lasting gratitude of all who are connected with or interested in this class of our citizens. If they will not listen to the burning words of the BASIS, it is simply because they do not wish to hear.
Since I last wrote you the BASIS has appeared regularly every Saturday and has been my most welcome visitor.
Cordially yours, Chas. W. Chesnutt.
Correspondent: Albion Winegar Tourgée (1838–1905) was a White activist, author, and judge. During Reconstruction, he settled in North Carolina and became an advocate for racial equality. Tourgée wrote his bestselling autobiographical novel, A Fool's Errand (1879), before moving to Mayville, New York, in 1881. He published fifteen more novels in the next seventeen years, and several times attempted to found magazines, often inviting Chesnutt to serve as editor. In 1891, he founded the National Citizens' Rights Association, an organization devoted to equality for African-American citizens, and in 1896 served as Homer Plessy's lead counsel in the U.S. Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).
1. The Basis: A Journal of Citizenship was founded by Albion W. Tourgée along with several Buffalo, New York, reformers and businessmen. The journal lasted thirteen months. [back]
2. Andrew Jackson Chesnutt (1833–1920), also known as A. J., was the father of Charles W. Chesnutt. Born in North Carolina, A. J. Chesnutt’s parents were a White man named Waddell Cade (c. 1775–1865) and a Black (identified as mulatta in census records) woman Anna (Ann) M. Chesnutt (c. 1813–1880). A. J. Chesnutt moved to Cleveland, Ohio, in the 1850s and married Ann Maria Chesnutt née Sampson (1832–1871), also from North Carolina. They had six children, three boys and three girls, of whom Charles Chesnutt was the oldest. The Chesnutt family moved to Fayetteville, N.C., after the Civil War, where A. J. Chesnutt also served as county commissioner and a justice of the peace for Fayetteville (1868–1870), while farming and running a grocery store. After the death of his wife, A. J. Chesnutt married his wife's cousin, Mary Ochiltree. [back]
3. T. J. Shauter appears to have been a member of the Ohio State Stenographers Association with Charles Chesnutt as well as a founder of the Federal Steel Sales Company in Cleveland, Ohio ("Association Meetings," The Shorthand Review 1, no. 9 [September 1889]: 5–6; "New Incorporations," The Iron Trade Review 51, no. 25 [November 19, 1912]: 1187). [back]
4. James E. Benson, a barber, resided at 45 Henry in the mid-1890s (see Cleveland City Directory 1894–1895 [Cleveland Public Directory Co., Cleveland, 1894], 79. Cleveland Public Library Digital Gallery, https://cplorg.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16014coll29/id/31651). [back]
5. William Theodore Boyd was a prosperous Black Clevelander, owner of a successful delivery service, and active (holding the title "Sir Knight") in the oldest Black fraternal lodge in Cleveland, the Masonic Lodge of Ohio. [back]
6. John Patterson Green (1845-1940) was Chesnutt's cousin and an attorney, active Republican, and the first Black to be elected Cleveland's justice of the peace (1873–1882). He served in the Ohio House of Representatives (1881–1883; 1889–1891), the Senate (1891–1893), and in Washington D.C. as U.S. Postage Stamp Agent (1897–1906). Green was also the author of Recollections of the Inhabitants, Localities, Superstitions and Kuklux Outrages of the Carolinas (1880). [back]
7. In addition to Chesnutt's support, the Basis also gained subscribers from other African Americans, including Ida B. Wells, William H. Anderson, and Harry C. Smith. In an effort to increase subscriptions, Tourgée offered prizes for "'sketches and stories by colored writers' illustrating the 'common life of the colored people'" (Carolyn L. Karcher, A Refugee from His Race: Albion W. Tourgée and His Fight against White Supremacy [Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2016], 194). [back]
8. In July 1895 the Cleveland Gazette reported that the Schenley Park Amusement Company, operator of the Pittsburgh Casino, was refusing to admit Blacks. In September, The Cleveland Leader reported that a grand jury had indicted the company. (See "The Mite Meet: C. T. Arter on Pittsburg's Color Line," Cleveland Gazette [July 13, 1895]: 1; "Negro's Rights Upheld," Cleveland Leader [September 3, 1895]: 1). [back]
