Archibald O. Poole to Charles W. Chesnutt, [May?] 1932
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[1]
Warren Book Company
Specialists in Negro Literature
222 WEST 135th STREET
TEL. BRAD. 2-0676
NEW YORK CITY1
Dear Librarian:
Two main factors made "The Green Pastures" one of the great plays of the century;2 its intrinsic merit and the fact that this country has in recent years become conscious of the American Negro and appreciative of the value of Negro culture.
This interest is real and widespread - so real that every library in the country ought to have at least the twenty most prominent Negro books and then others.
At 103 West 135th Street, New York City, is a branch library with 4500 books by or about members of the colored race. When you are out that way, don't hesitate to drop in and ask questions.3
Our experience has shown that the twenty most significant to Colored people and to those interested in the Negro race and its problems are:4
| Porgy.......... | DuBois Heyward | $ 1.00 |
| Weary Blues...... | Langston |
2.00 |
| The Soul of Black Folk. | W. E. B. DuBois | 2.00 |
| Negro Year Book 1931.. | Monroe N. Work | 2.00 |
| American Negro Poetry. | James Weldon Johnson | 2.00 |
| Negro (Asset or Liability) | John Louis & Hill | 2.00 |
| Color......... | Countee Cullen | 2.00 |
| Portraits in Color... | M. W. Ovington | 2.00 |
| Fire in the Flint... | Walter White | 2.50 |
| What the Negro Thinks.. | R. R. Moton | 2.50 |
| God's Trombones... | James Weldon Johnson | 2.50 |
| Not without Laughter.. | Langston Hughes | 2.50 |
| My Spirituals...... | Eva A. Jessye | 2.50 |
| Plum Bun......... | Jessie Fauset | 2.50 |
| Dunbar's Poems...... | Paul L. Dunbar | 2.50 |
| Black Manhattan.... | James Weldon Johnson | 3.00 |
| Books of American Negro Spirituals . | James Weldon Johnson | 3.50 |
| Blues......... | W. C. Handy | 3.50 |
| The Black Worker.... | Spero & Harris | 4.50 |
| The New Negro.... | Alain Locke | 5.00 |
You are entitled to a discount of 25 per cent from our list prices. Please get in touch with us.
Very truly yours, WARREN BOOK COMPANYP.S. Please fill in the enclosed card and mail. No postage necessary.
[2] Thanks Archie PooleCorrespondent: The Warren Book Company, a bookstore dedicated to Black authors, was initially located on Staten Island and later in New York City, a block from the New York Public Library's Harlem Branch. It was owned and run by Archibald O. Poole (1885—1963), a Black printer, publisher, and photographer. In the 1920s and 1930s, he sent advertising circulars to individuals and organizations; his personal responses to Chesnutt were written on two of those circulars. Poole lived on Staten Island and along with his wife Drusilla (1888—1972) was active in many local civil rights organizations.
1. Although this letter is undated, it must have been written in the second half of May or early June of 1932. Chesnutt had written to Poole on May 16, 1932, requesting a copy of a book. Poole's handwritten note here confirms receipt of Chesnutt's order, so this letter must have been written after May 16. [back]
2. The Green Pastures (1930) was a Pulitzer-prize winning play by White writer Marc Connelly (1890–1980) that set Biblical tales in a New Orleans Black community. In 1930–1931, the play ran for sixteen months on Broadway with an all-Black cast, before a successful tour of more than two hundred cities. [back]
3. The Harlem branch of the New York Public Library at 103 135th Street in New York City (now expanded to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture) began as a Carnegie library in 1905 and became a hub of the Harlem Renaissance in the early 1920s. In 1925, it became the Division of Negro Literature, History and Prints. A number of Chesnutt's 20th-century correspondents were involved in its founding, including Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (1874–1938), a major donor of documents, for whom the library was later named. [back]
4. Poole's list of the top twenty most important books on race includes well-known Harlem Renaissance authors and intellectuals as well as some of their predecessors, several of whom were also Chesnutt's correspondents. Langston Hughes (1901–1967), one of the youngest writers mentioned, was one of Chesnutt's daughter Helen's high-school students at Cleveland's Central High. Poetry, fiction, drama, and nonfiction are all included here. W. E. B. DuBois's and Paul Laurence Dunbar's mentioned works aside, the texts were published between 1922 and 1931. [back]
5. The 1923 novel Veiled Aristocrats by the White American journalist and fiction writer Gertrude Sanborn (1881–1928) dealt with "passing" and interracial romance. It was published by Associated Publishers, the publishing company founded by Carter G. Woodson (1875–1950) in 1921, and advertised in his Journal of Negro History, to which Chesnutt subscribed. Oscar Micheaux (1884–1951) used the book's title and theme for his remake of The House Behind the Cedars, but adhered to Chesnutt's character names, setting, and plot (albeit loosely). [back]
