Otelia Cromwell to Charles W. Chesnutt, 9 February 1931
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1815 Thirteenth Street, N. W., Washington, D. C.,1
February 9, 1931
Mr. Charles W. Chesnutt
1106 Williamson Building
Cleveland, Ohio
My dear Mr. Chesnutt:
Otelia Cromwell, Professor of English in Miner Teachers College, Lorenzo D. Turner,2 Professor of English in Fisk University, and Eva B. Dykes,3 Associate Professor of English in Howard University, have collected and edited for a school and college textbook selections from the writings of Negro authors. This textbook--"Readings from Negro Authors for Schools and Colleges"--will be published by Harcourt, Brace and Company of New York.4 From the enclosed excerpts from the "Preface" and "Suggestions for Study," an indication of the point of view of the editors and their method of editing is given.5
On behalf of the editors I am requesting the privilege of printing in this textbook the selections listed on the enclosed form.6 If you will kindly sign the form and return it to me in the enclosed envelope, I shall be grateful.
I am Very sincerely yours, Otelia Cromwell OC/BP.S. By a financial arrangement we are securing "Hot Foot Hannibal" from Houghton Mifflin Co.
O.C.Correspondent: 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. The publisher Harcourt, Brace and Company, originally founded as Harcourt, Brace and Howe in 1919 and renamed in 1921, was named after the two White East coast editors who founded it, Alfred Harcourt (1881—1954) and Donald Brace (1881—1955). Joel Spingarn (1875—1939), White professor of comparative literature at Columbia University who was board chairman (and later president) of the NAACP and knew Chesnutt personally, was Harcourt, Brace and Company's first vice president. The publisher specialized in contemporary American literature and textbooks. They never offered Chesnutt a contract, but they published one of the first textbooks to anthologize Black literature, which included two of his short stories: Readings from Negro Authors for Schools and Colleges, ed. Otelia Cromwell, Lorenzo Dow Turner, and Eva B. Dykes (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1931), 59–84. [back]
5. The mentioned preface as published is brief and focused on pedagogy (pages iii–v); the "Suggestions for Study" include specific questions and essay prompts for both of Chesnutt's stories (pages 326–329). [back]
6. 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]
