Edgar S. Byers to Charles W. Chesnutt, 20 September 1932
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FRIEBOLIN & BYERS
LAWYERS
2002 GUARANTEE TITLE BLDG
CLEVELAND, OHIO
MAIN 7653
CARL D. FRIEBOLIN
EDGAR S. BYERS
ARTHUR W. FRIEBOLIN
September 20th, 1932.
Charles W. Chestnutt,
Attorney at Law,
1646 Union Trust Building,
Cleveland, Ohio.
Dear Mr. Chestnutt:
As a member of the Attendance Committee of the Cuyahoga Bar Association,1 may I direct your attention to the fact that the installation meeting of the Association will be held at 6:30 P.M. on September 29th, at the Hollenden Hotel Ballroom.2
I am informed that the meeting will be addressed by Senator Bulkley3 and by Attorney General Bettman,4 which should make it most interesting.
Will you not kindly mark the date on your calendar and make every effort to be present?
Very truly yours, E. S. Byers ESB/ECorrespondent: Edgar S. Byers (1876–1963) was a White lawyer and left-leaning political activist who had a law practice in Cleveland with the lawyer and well-known satirist Carl D. Friebolin (1878–1967). Like Chesnutt, he was a member of the City Club (and its director, 1927–1930), where he formed a group called the Soviet Table.
1. The Cuyahoga County Bar Association was founded in 1927 by Cleveland lawyers who were dissatisfied with the Cleveland Bar Association, founded in 1874. Their goal was a professional organization that was non-sectarian and non-political. The two associations became less antagonistic in later years. [back]
2. The Hollenden Hotel was a luxury hotel in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. From 1888 to 1923, it had a large barbershop run by a prominent Black Clevelander, George A. Myers (1859–1930), who was active in local politics and a sometime correspondent of Chesnutt's. While Booker T. Washington stayed at the Hollenden on several occasions, Black guests were generally not welcome. [back]
3. Robert Johns Bulkley (1880–1965) was a White banker, lawyer, and Democratic politician from Ohio, and like Chesnutt a member of the Rowfant Club. He was the leading partner in a prominent law firm (under various names, initially Bulkley, Hauxhurst, Inglis and Saeger), for whom Chesnutt's stenography business sometimes worked. A two-term U.S. Representative for Chesnutt's district (1911–1915), Bulkley won a special election to the U.S. Senate in 1930 after the death of Theodore Burton (1851–1929), where he served for nine years. [back]
4. Gilbert Bettman (1881–1942) was a White Jewish lawyer and Republican politician from Cincinnati, Ohio, who served as Ohio's Attorney General from 1929 to 1933. In 1932, he ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Robert J. Bulkley (1880–1929). [back]
