Charles W. Chesnutt to Unidentified Correspondents, 6 May 1922
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[1]
May 6, 1922.
Dear Sir:
I am writing you, at the request of Mr. Ernest Angell1 of New York, formerly of Squire, Sanders and Dempsey here,2 and who is attorney for I think the Santo Domingan Society. Mr. Angell has requested me3 to ask a number of leading colored citizens, after reading the enclosed pamphlet,4 to write to Honorable Frank B. Willis,5 U. S. Senate, Washington, D. C., and if they feel inclined to do so, ask him, as forcefully as they can consistent with proper courtesy, to support the conclusions set out at the end of this report, and specifically that he support the three resolutions introduced into the Senate by Senator King and now pending before the Foreign Relations Committee.6 These are numbers 219, 233 and 256. They call for withdrawal of our forces from Haiti and Santo Domingo, for opposition to any loan to Haiti at the present time (the present proposed loan would subject Haitian finances and indirectly the Haitian Government to complete control by the United States for the Next thirty or forty years), and finally, provide the practical means for the withdrawal of the American
[2]
forces, the restitution of a genuine native government in Haiti and the transfer of governmental functions as now exercised by Americans to a re-constituted Haitian Government.
Correspondent: Chesnutt used this form letter template, addressed to "leading Black citizens," to urge other Black Clevelanders to write to U.S. Senator Frank B. Willis (R-OH). It shares language with the letter that he himself wrote to Willis on the same day and was the apparent basis for at least three surviving letters: to Harry C. Smith, editor of the Cleveland Gazette, to Horace C. Bailey, pastor of Antioch Baptist Church, and George P. Hinton, Black businessman and activist.
1. Ernest Angell (1889–1973) was a White lawyer, originally from Cleveland, who worked for a prominent Cleveland law firm after service in World War I and by 1920 was working in corporate law for the firm of Hardin & Hess in New York. He represented the Haiti-Santo Domingo Independence Society (founded in 1921) at the hearings of the 1921–22 Senate investigation on the U.S. occupation of Haiti. [back]
2. Squire, Sanders and Dempsey was a prestigious Cleveland law firm. [back]
3. See Ernest Angell's letters to Chesnutt of March 20, 1922 and April 26, 1922. [back]
4. The sixteen-page report, entitled "The Seizure of Haiti by the United States: A Report on the Military Occupation of the Republic of Haiti and the History of the Treaty Forced Upon Her," was published by the Foreign Policy Association (New York) and distributed by the National Popular Government League (Washington, D.C.) with twenty-four signatures. It called for the U.S. to abrogate the treaty that was the basis of the occupation, for election of a new government in Haiti, and for new treaty negotiations between "free and independent sovereign states" (p. 15). [back]
5. Frank Bartlett Willis (1871–1928) was a White Republican politician from Ohio. Trained as a lawyer, he served in the Ohio House (1900–1904) before becoming a U.S. Congressman (1911–1915) and then governor of Ohio (1915–1917). From 1921 to 1928 he represented Ohio in the U.S. Senate, where he served alongside his Democratic rival, Atlee Pomerene, for the first two years. [back]
6. Senate Resolution 256, introduced by Democratic Senator William H. King (Utah, 1863–1949) on March 10, 1922, called for the U.S. to withdraw from Haiti and to oversee democratic elections. (See "Would Evacuate Haiti," New York Times, March 11, 1922, 8.) [back]
