Charles W. Chesnutt to Harvey M. Williamson, 25 April 1932
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April 25, 1932
Mr. Harvey M. Williamson,
2508 East 59th Street,
City.
Dear Mr. Williamson:
I have received your letter of April 15th,1 and since its receipt, the copy of the "Skyline," which you were good enough to send me, containing one of your stories.2 This particular story, from my point of view, is well constructed. It has a dramatic theme which is very effectively worked out.
I should not criticize your work because it deals with life on Southern plantations. You are writing about a subject that you know, which is always desirable in a writer. For one to write about an unfamiliar subject is to court literary disaster. A man writes best about what he knows best.
Some of the best American writers have made their reputations writing about Southern conditions. I do not need to mention George W. Cable,3 Thomas Nelson Page,4 or, in our own day, Mrs. Julia Peterkin,5 or the author of "Cane" and other stories.6
I think for one who has only been writing a year, your story in "Skyline" is indeed very promising. Unless I hear from you to the contrary, I will keep the copy of the "Skyline" which you sent me, so that I may have your story in my library.
Wishing you every success, I remain,
Sincerely yours, CWC:ES7Correspondent: Harvey M. Williamson (1908–1995), a Black educator, activist, and writer, was originally from Mississippi and came to Cleveland in 1924. He attended East Technical High School and Western Reserve University (initially at Cleveland College, its adult education branch), and published fiction and poetry in the 1930s. He was active in many organizations pursuing racial justice, including the NAACP and the Phillis Wheatley Association.
1. Williamson's letter of April 15, 1932, and Chesnutt's copy of the Skyline magazine have not been located. [back]
2. Skyline was the student literary magazine of Cleveland College (founded in 1925 as an adult education institution, later absorbed into Western Reserve University). Harvey M. Williamson (1908–1995), then still a college student, continued to publish poetry and short stories throughout the 1930s, including in Skyline, but also in The Crisis and Story. [back]
3. George Washington Cable (1844–1925) was a White reporter, novelist, and critic. He began his career at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, writing nearly one hundred columns in two years. After working on a collection of journalistic essays based mostly on historical accounts, Cable turned to writing short stories, novellas, and novels, typically set in New Orleans. In the 1880s, Cable began lecturing, writing essays, and forming organizations focused on social reform, specifically in the areas of Black rights and prison conditions, and in 1885 he moved to Northampton, Massachusetts. Cable and Chesnutt met for the first time in Cleveland, on December 21, 1888, at the Congregational Club's Forefather's Day celebration, where Cable was the principal speaker. They began corresponding immediately, and in mid-1889 Cable offered to employ Chesnutt as his secretary in Northampton; Chesnutt declined. Cable visited the Chesnutt home in the fall of 1889, and for two years, their correspondence was frequent, typically about Cable's political efforts on race issues, Chesnutt's writings, or recent publications. After 1891, they corresponded only occasionally. [back]
4. Thomas Nelson Page (1853–1922) was a White writer and lawyer from Virginia who glorified the antebellum South in his fiction and nonfiction, beginning with his "Marse Chan" stories published in Century Magazine. Chesnutt frequently criticized Page's writings; see Chesnutt's retrospective assessment in "Post-Bellum—Pre-Harlem" (1931). [back]
5. Julia Peterkin (1880–1961) was a White American writer from South Carolina, who used the Gullah lanugage in her fiction; she won a Pulitzer Prize for her 1928 novel Scarlet Sister Mary. [back]
6. Jean Toomer (1894–1967) was a Black American poet and novelist from Washington, DC, who was associated with the Harlem Renaissance. His experimental novel Cane, published in 1923, was set substantially in rural Georgia. [back]
7. Emilie Skarabotta (1908–1990), the daughter of Hungarian immigrants, was a stenographer and notary public who worked for Chesnutt's and Helen Moore's stenography business in the early 1930s. She was eventually listed on the firm's letterhead. [back]
