Charles W. Chesnutt to Henry Clay Tyson, 20 December 1921
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December 20, 1921.
H. C. Tyson, Esq.,
2124 K. Street, N. W.,
Washington, D. C.
My dear Clay:
I have your letter with reference to Will Henderson's ambition to become recorder of deeds in Washington,1 and shall be very glad to write to the President a letter endorsing him, if that is the proper thing to do. I don't know the President personally, and have no idea how far, if at all, my endorsement would influence him.2
The President is very slow about giving appointments to colored men. He made a very fine pronouncement at Birmingham on the rights of the Negro, but he rather offset it in the second part of his speech, which was it seems to me entirely uncalled for, and had no relation to the first part at all. I hope he can be made to see the light.3
I am glad your son is prospering so nicely in Charlotte, and hope you left him and his family well.4 Give him my regards when you write. Also give my love to Jane.5
Wishing you both a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, I remain
Sincerely yours, CWC/FLCorrespondent: Henry Clay Tyson (1853–1926), orginally from Carthage, North Carolina, was Chesnutt's brother-in-law; a Black civil servant and activist married to Susan Chesnutt's sister Jane Beze Perry (1859–1939). He had graduated from the Fayetteville Normal School in 1879 and served as teacher and assistant principal under Chesnutt at the Fayetteville Normal School (1881–1883). He moved to Washington, D.C., in 1883, worked as a civil servant and later as private secretary of Henry P. Cheatham (1857–1935), Black congressman from North Carolina from 1889 to 1893. Tyson was also active in the Bethel Literary and Historical Association in D.C., where Chesnutt delivered several addresses between 1899–1913. The Tysons had three children, and the Chesnutts visited them on several occasions; they also asked "Uncle Clay" for assistance in finding Helen a teaching position in D.C. in 1901 (see Helen Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Lin [Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1952], 110, 196, 165).
1. William Everett Henderson (1858–1932), a Black lawyer and activist, was originally from Salisbury, North Carolina, and received his law degree from Hastings College of Law in California. He had a law practice in Wilmington, North Carolina, and played a major role in the Wilmington Coup and Massacre of 1898, afterwards fleeing with his wife Sallie Bettie (1861–1956) and his children to Indianapolis, Indiana, where he practiced law from 1899 until the time of his death. [back]
2. William Henderson did not become the Recorder of Deeds for Washington, D. C., a presidentially appointed post that had historically been given to prominent Black politicians. President Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) instead appointed the Black lawyer and Republican politician Arthur Glenn Froe (1876–1932), who held the post for eight years (1922–1930). [back]
3. On October 26, 1921, Republican President Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) had given a widely reprinted address at the celebration of the semicentennial of the founding of Birmingham, Alabama. While he endorsed political and economic equality, he explicitly rejected social equality, desegregation, and intermarriage, for which he was criticized by many Black leaders (see, for example, W. E. B. Du Bois, "President Harding and Social Equality," The Crisis 12, no. 2 [December 1921]: 53–56). [back]
4. Edwin French Tyson (1885—1962) was the son of Henry Clay and Jane Perry Tyson, who was Chesnutt's sister-in-law (his wife Susan's sister). Born in Fayetteville and educated in Washington, DC, he graduated from Harvard in 1907; as a teenager and an undergraduate, he informally sold Chesnutt's books to Black readers in the D.C. area from 1899 to 1905. He later attended Howard Medical School, and opened a practice as a general physician in Charlotte, NC, in 1912. He married Ada Estelle Tate (1889—1938) in 1920; their daughter May Beze Tyson was born in 1923, and his widowed mother Jane lived with the family 1926—1939. He remarried in 1943. [back]
5. Jane Beze Perry Tyson (1859—1939) was one of Susan Perry Chesnutt's sisters. She was two years Susan's senior and, like Susan, became a teacher when still a teenager. She married fellow teacher Henry Clay Tyson (1853—1926) in 1879, the year after the Chesnutts got married, and the two young couples and their firstborns lived with the sisters' parents in 1880. The Tysons had three children, Annie, Mary, and Edwin, and lived in Washington, DC, after 1883. Chesnutt stayed with them on several occasions at their home at 2124 K Street, NW (see Helen M. Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line [Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1952], 110, 196). [back]
