Booker T. Washington to Charles W. Chesnutt, 1906
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[?]
Mr. Charles W. Chestnutt[sic],
1005 Williamson Building
Cleveland, Ohio.
My dear Mr. Chesnutt-
I shall be sending along to you in the next day or two, the article1 for Miss Kline.2
I trust that the slight delay will not interfere with her plans.
Very truly, Booker T Washington[?] T.Correspondent: Booker T. Washington (1856–1913), one of the most well-known Black activists of the early 20th century, was born into slavery in Virginia; in 1881, he became the principal of what would become the Tuskegee Institute, advocating widely as a speaker and writer for technical education for Blacks, whose entry into American industry and business leadership he believed to be the road to equality. His political power was significant, but because he frequently argued for compromise with White Southerners, including on voting rights, he was also criticized by other Black activists, especially by W. E. B. Du Bois.
1. Booker T. Washington's short essay "The Negro Rural School" was written as a contribution to the single-issue Hathaway Brown Magazine that was part of the fundraising efforts of the Hathaway Brown School, a private girls school in Cleveland, Ohio. Chesnutt also contributed a piece—the short story "The Prophet Peter."[back]
2. Mary Kline Pope (1877–1964) was the older of the daughters of Virgil P. Kline, prominent Cleveland lawyer and acquaintance of Chesnutt's. Both Mary Kline Pope and her sister Minerva Kline Brooks (1883–1929) graduated from Hathaway Brown, a private school for girls. By 1906, Mary Kline was the president of the school's alumnae association and in that capacity approached Chesnutt (and through him Booker T. Washington) to contribute articles to the magazine that was part of her fundraiser to support the completion of the new school buildings at Logan St.[back]
