Mary Haven Thirkield to Charles W. Chesnutt, 10 May 1932
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FIFTEEN GRAMERCY PARK
NEW YORK
5/10/32
My dear Mr. Chestnut
The picture on the enclosed folder records the first lynching in 1931. Is it not distressing beyond words that there were twelve more of these victims before the year closed!1 The whole thing is so wrong, so unjust, so cruel that something must be done to stop these horrors. I believe that the plan suggested in the folder will help to right this evil. I hope it will appeal to your sympathy and sense of justice After all, would you not give a great deal to save even one terrorized victim from mob violence? Please take your stand with us as one who personally is willing to help wipe out this evil.
Yours sincerely, Mary Haven Thirkield (Mrs. W. P.)2Please return the booklet with your response.3
Correspondent: Mary Michelle Haven Thirkield (1858–1935), a White woman from the Boston, Massachusetts, area, was the daughter of well-known abolitionist Gilbert Haven (1821–1880) and married to Wilbur Patterson Thirkield (1854–1936). She was a lifelong advocate for Black rights and Black education through the Methodist Episcopal Church's Women's Home Missionary Society, whose president she was from 1913 to 1927. After many years spent mostly in the South, she and her spouse lived in New York City after his retirement in 1928.
1. The anti-lynching folder or booklet Thirkield sent ("A Black Blot? or a Clean Page?") has not been located, and the organization that created it is not known. But it was likely based at least partly on the NAACP's "Lynching Record for 1931," the annual supplement added to its original lynching report, Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889-1918 (New York: NAACP, 1919), since the NAACP listed thirteen Black victims (and one White), of which the first was Raymond Gunn, lynched in Marysville, Missouri, on January 12, 1931. [back]
2. Wilbur Patterson Thirkield (1854–1936) was a White Methodist Episcopal bishop and, as of 1881, the husband of Mary Haven Thierkield (1858–1935). Originally from Ohio and an advocate of Black education, he was involved in the founding of the Gammon School of Theology at historically Black Clark University in the 1880s and its president until 1900, later becoming president of Howard University (1906–1912). He was a founding member of the NAACP. After many years of serving his denomination mostly in the South (1912–1928), he retired to New York. [back]
3. [back]
