Otelia Cromwell to Charles W. Chesnutt, 23 February 1931
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1815 Thirteenth Street, N. W.1
Washington D. C.
February 23, 1931
Mr. Charles W. Chesnutt
1646 Union Trust Building
Cleveland, Ohio
My dear Mr. Chesnutt:
On behalf of the editors of Readings from Negro Authors for Schools and Colleges--Otelia Cromwell, Lorenzo D. Turner,2 and Eva B. Dykes3--I am writing to express our gratitude to you for the permission you have given us to print "The Wife of His Youth".4 We shall only be too happy to acknowledge in the customary way our obligation to you.
I remain
Very sincerely yours, Otelia Cromwell OC/GMCorrespondent: Otelia Cromwell (1874–1972) was a Black professor of English from Washington, D.C.. She graduated with a BA from Smith College in 1900, a year before Chesnutt's daughters Helen and Ethel; the three were the only Black students at Smith at the time. Cromwell taught English, German, and Latin in Washington, D.C., both at M Street High School (later Dunbar High School) and the Armstrong Manual Training School, and completed an M.A. (Columbia 1910) and a Ph.D. (Yale 1926). She was professor at Miner Teachers College (now University of the District of Columbia) from 1926 to 1944.
1. This was Otelia Cromwell's home address, a residence which she shared with her four siblings (most of them also educators) and her brother's wife and child. [back]
2. Lorenzo Dow Turner (1890–1972) was a Black professor of English and linguistics with degrees from Howard, Harvard, and the University of Chicago. Originally from North Carolina, he taught at Howard (1917–1928), at Fisk, where he was chair of the English department (1929–1946), and later at Chicago's Roosevelt University (1946–1967). He helped found the Peace Corps and was a pioneer in the study of Gullah, the language spoken by the descendants of enslaved people in coastal South Carolina and Georgia. [back]
3. Eva Beatrice Dykes (1893–1986) was a Black English professor from Washington, D.C. After completing two BAs (Howard 1914, Radcliffe 1917) and an MA (Radcliffe 1918) she became one of the first Black women to receive her Ph.D. (Radcliffe 1921). In Washington, D.C., she taught at her alma mater, Dunbar High School (the former M Street High School) from 1920 to 1929, and at Howard (1929–1944); later, she became the chair of the English department of a small religious college in Alabama. [back]
4. Readings from Negro Authors for Schools and Colleges, edited by Otelia Cromwell, Lorenzo Dow Turner, and Eva B. Dykes (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1931), was one of the first textbooks to anthologize Black literature. It included two of Chesnutt's stories: "The Wife of His Youth," and "Hot-Foot Hannibal." "The Wife of His Youth" had initially appeared in the July 1898 Atlantic Monthly and served as the title story for The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1899). "Hot-Foot Hannibal" had been published first in the January 1899 Atlantic Monthly and was later included in The Conjure Woman (1899). [back]
