Charles W. Chesnutt to Wendell Phillips Dabney, 13 October 1931
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October 13, 1931
W. P. Dabney, Esq.,
Editor, The Union,1
Cincinnati, Ohio.
My dear Colonel:
This is the first time I have been at my desk for five weeks, and the first thing I take occasion to do is to write you to thank you for your friendly call and for the beautiful flowers which so refreshed my sick room.2
I have before me at this moment a copy of The Union, and have been chuckling at some of the wisecracks in "Gossip and Reflections". Some of them are not above criticism from the standpoint of a purist, but they are all full of pep, which no doubt accounts for their popularity.
Quite a few things have been happening in the world at large. Mr. Hoover seems to have opened up quite a bit, which will be for the benefit of his popularity.3 Mr. DePriest4 and Alderman Anderson5 seem to be at swords' points, to whose advantage time alone will tell. Whichever one is nominated will undoubtedly be elected from that district. We have already seen what DePriest can do. He seems to have demonstrated one thing that he cannot do, that is to get a colored cadet in either West Point or Annapolis. Perhaps Mr. Anderson would do better in that regard.6
I see you are still working away at the N.A.A.C.P.7 From your point of view it would seem to be justified, but I hope the organization or the labor organization which is fighting for them, one or the other or both together, will succeed in saving the lives of the nine unfortunate colored boys in Scottsville. Their photographs -- and I don't mean their color -- are not particularly impressive, but I have no doubt they were framed, and if convicted and excuted will be just that many more martyrs to race prejudice. I am glad Clarence Darrow has been secured to aid in their defense.8
[2]
Mr. Dabney - page 2
My family are all well. My wife9 is pretty nearly tired out nursing me for the past six weeks. A more loyal and devoted wife no man ever had, and I've got my job cut out for the rest of my life to make her feel how much I appreciate her devotion. The young ladies of the family are well,10 and little Johnnie11 is full of pep and vinegar. All send their regards and hope to see you when you are around this way again.
Sincerely yours, CWC:ESCorrespondent: Wendell Phillips Dabney (1865–1952) was a Black activist, musician and journalist. Originally from Richmond, Virginia, he moved to Ohio in 1883 to study at Oberlin, Ohio, and then to Cincinnati, Ohio in 1894. He worked for the city of Cincinnati from 1895 until 1923 and was the founder, editor, and publisher of the Black weekly paper The Union (1907–1952). Chesnutt and Dabney knew of each other in the 1920s, but only their 1930s correspondence survives.
1. The Union was a Cincinnati-based Black weekly newspaper founded in 1907 by Wendell Phillips Dabney (1865–1952), who edited it until his death. Initially affiliated with the Republican Party, it identified as Independent after 1925. [back]
2. Chesnutt became seriously ill and was home-bound from late August to at least mid-October of 1931; while he is vague about the nature of his illness, his letters thanking friends for flowers, gifts, and visits indicate that they had been very concerned. [back]
3. Chesnutt is perhaps referring here to recent actions by President Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) that signalled more support for some Black activist organizations and some tentative concessions to Black Republicans. Hoover had also condemned lynching, although he stopped short of endorsing a new federal anti-lynching bill. [back]
4. Oscar Stanton dePriest (1871–1951) was a Black politician and activist from Chicago, Illinois who, as a U.S. Representative for Illinois (1929–1935), was the only Black congressman at this time. Originally from Alabama, he became a wealthy contractor and real-estate broker in Chicago after 1889 and was active in Chicago politics by the early 1900s. He served as alderman on the Chicago City Council 1915–1917 and again 1943–1947. During his time in Congress, he introduced several anti-discrimination and anti-lynching bills. [back]
5. Louis B. Anderson (1870–1946) was a Black Chicago politician who served as alderman on the City Council (1917–1933). Originally from Virginia, he became a journalist in Washington, DC, and then Chicago, where he was contribuing editor for the Chicago Defender. He was a Republican and initially replaced Oscar dePriest as alderman when the latter resigned following a grafting scandal in 1917. In 1931, he briefly considered running for U.S. Congress against dePriest. [back]
6. Both of these military academies required cadets to be appointed by a U.S. Representative. In July of 1932, Oscar dePriest succeeded in sponsoring the first Black cadet to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point since the 1880s, the Cleveland-raised Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. (1912–2002), who was later a distinguished Tuskegee Airman and general in the U.S. Air Force. No Black cadet was nominated to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis between 1897 and 1936. [back]
7. Wendell Dabney was founder and first president of the Cincinnati chapter of the NAACP (started in 1915), but seems to have become increasingly critical of the organization, possibly, as Chesnutt implies here, because of its (short-lived) cooperation with the International Labor Defense, the legal advocacy organization affiliated with the Communist Party USA, during the Scottsboro Nine trials. Because no copies of the Union from this period have survived, it is unclear whether Chesnutt is alluding to something he read there. [back]
8. The Scottsboro Nine were Black teenage boys accused of having raped two White women and attacked seven White men on a train going to Scottsboro, Alabama in March 1931. The case was widely covered in the press. Initially, eight of the nine were convicted and sentenced to death in a series of rushed and prejudiced trials. Appeals followed, and the case went to the Supreme Court, which sent the case back to be retried in November of 1932. The NAACP was involved in the initial appeals and had engaged famous attorney Clarence Darrow (1857–1938), but as the International Labor Defense, the legal advocacy group of the Communist Party USA, took over the defense, Darrow and the NAACP distanced themselves from the case. [back]
9. 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]
10. Chesnutt's daughters Helen and Dorothy were both living with their parents (Helen working as a secondary-school teacher since 1904, and Dorothy since 1919). Dorothy lived there until her husband completed his medical degree in 1931. Helen continued to live with her mother after her father's death, until her mother died in 1940. [back]
11. Chesnutt's grandson "Johnnie," John Chesnutt Slade (1925–2011), spent much time with his grandparents as a small child, since he and his mother, Dorothy (1890–1954), lived with them until the fall of 1931, when her husband John G. Slade (1890–1976) completed his medical degree at Howard University. He and his mother also spent the summers with his grandparents in Idlewild, Michigan. [back]
