Charles W. Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, 21 July 1910
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CHAS. W. CHESNUTT
1105 WILLIAMSON BUILDING
CLEVELAND, O.
Cleveland, July 21, 1910.
Dr. Booker T. Washington,
Tuskegee Institute, Alabama.
My dear Dr. Washington,
I have been intending to write you for some time, but a rather severe illness which kept me confined to my bed for four weeks and from which I am only now convalescing, has interfered with my intention.1
I want to thank you for your interest in and kindness to my children.2 Helen enjoyed her visit Tuskegee3 very much indeed, and has had nothing but fine things to say about the place and people since her return.4
Edwin seems to be very well pleased with his work and his outlook, and I sincerely hope that you will find him worthy of your confidence.5 My daughter Ethel is enjoying her visit to Tuskegee, and I hope is making herself useful.6
Mrs. Chesnutt7 and Helen join me in kindest regards to yourself and Mrs. Washington.8
Sincerely yours, Chas. W. Chesnutt Sent to he[?] noted: 7/23Correspondent: 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. Chesnutt suffered a stroke in early June 1910 and was hospitalized for several weeks (see Helen Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952], 238). [back]
2. Helen, Ethel and Edwin Chesnutt all spent time at the Tuskegee Institute in the summer months of 1910. In May, Helen was a visitor to Booker T. Washington's household while recovering from a recent illness. Ethel, whose home was in Washington, DC, had spent the summer teaching at Tuskegee. Edwin had accepted a position as a stenographer for Booker T. Washington, and remained at Tuskegee until 1912. [back]
3. The Tuskegee Institute (now University), in Tuskegee, Alabama, evolved from the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers, founded in 1881, with Booker T. Washington as its first president. 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]
4. 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's Central High School for more than four decades starting in 1904, co-authored a Latin textbook, The Road to Latin, in 1932, and served on the executive committee of the American Philological Association in 1920. She became her father's literary executor and first biographer. [back]
5. Edwin Jackson Chesnutt (1883—1939) was the third child of Charles and Susan Chesnutt. Born in North Carolina, he spent his childhood in Cleveland, Ohio, graduated from Harvard University in 1905, and decided not to remain abroad after an extended stay in France in 1906. Instead, he trained and worked as a stenographer, including at the Tuskegee Institute from 1910–1912. After obtaining a degree in dentistry at Northwestern University in 1917, he became a dentist in Chicago. [back]
6. Ethel Perry Chesnutt Williams (1879–1958), Chesnutt's eldest daughter, graduated from Smith College in June of 1901 and worked as an instructor at Tuskegee for the academic year 1901–1902. In the fall of 1902, she married her fiancé, Edward C. Williams (1871–1929), then head librarian at Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Their only child was Charles Waddell Chesnutt Williams (1903–1940). After several years spent in Cleveland in 1909, the Williamses moved to Washington, D.C., where Ethel continued to live and work after her husband's death in 1929; in the early 1930s, she was working as a social worker (home visitor) for Associated Charities of Washington, a poverty-relief umbrella organization. By 1939, she had remarried; her spouse was Rev. Joseph N. Beaman (1868–1943). [back]
7. 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]
8. Margaret Murray Washington (ca. 1865–1925) was an educator and social reformer. She earned her teaching degree at Fisk University, served as the Lady Principal of the Tuskegee Institute and helped expand Tuskegee programs. She became Booker T. Washington's wife after the death of his second wife and often accompanied him on his lecture tours. She helped found the organization that was to become the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC) in 1896 and became its president in 1914. [back]
