Emmett J. Scott to Charles W. Chesnutt, 6 May 1903
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Copy
May 6, 1903.
Mr. Charles W. Chesnutt,
#1005 Williamson Building,
Cleveland, Ohio.
My dear Mr. Chesnutt :--
I shall see that your letter of May 2d has Mr. Washington's attention on his return to the school.1 I need not tell you that he will welcome the frank statement you submit with references t o his own position with regard to southern affairs.2
With expression of personal esteem, I am
Very truly yours, Private Secretary.Correspondent: Emmett Jay Scott (1873–1957), a Black journalist from Texas, became Booker T. Washington's personal secretary in 1897 and was his influential advisor until Washington's death in 1913. He served at the Tuskegee Institute until 1917, and later at Howard University (1919–1939). During World War I, he was Special Assistant for Negro Affairs under Secretary of War Newton D. Baker (1871–1937). His notes on Chesnutt's letters often steered Washington's attention to specific letters; his direct correspondence with Chesnutt spanned over three decades.
1. The Tuskegee Institute (now University), in Tuskegee, Alabama, evolved from the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers, founded in 1881, with Booker T. Washington as its first president. It became a leading educational institution for Blacks in the South, emphasizing teacher training and industrial education. Chesnutt, who had himself been the principal of a Black normal school in the early 1880s, first visited Tuskegee in February 1901, and remained well-informed about and personally connected with the institution all his life. [back]
2. Chesnutt's letter from May 2, 1903 referenced by Emmett J. Scott here constitutes the beginning of Chesnutt's critique of Booker T. Washington's conciliatory politics, which continued through an exchange increasingly focused on the voting rights restrictions in the fall of 1903 and beyond. Scott was obviously aware of the ongoing debate. The May 2, 1903, letter is reprinted in The Booker T. Washington Papers, ed. Louis R. Harlan and Raymond W. Smock (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), Vol.7: 136–137, although McElrath and Leitz list it as unlocated (see "To Be an Author": Letters of Charles W. Chesnutt, 1889–1905, ed. Joseph R. McElrath and Robert C. Leitz, III (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 182. [back]
