Charles B. Curtis to Charles W. Chesnutt, 15 November 1921
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INDUSTRIAL MISSION ASSOCIATION1
(Mission at Beloit, Ala.)
Executive Office and Correspondence at Pensacola, Fla.,
Nov. 15th, 1921.
Ck 5.00Sent Dec 5/212 Dear Friend:-
This is our second letter, sent to those who have not responded to the first, possibly through inability to give, in which case pay no attention to this, unless you can afford to send us a line of sympathy which is always appreciated, possibly through forgetfulness, in which case this is a gentle reminder that we are still working away at our great problem of how to match increasing expenditure with decreasing income.
School opened October 1st with fifty per cent larger attendance compared with last year. We have engaged an extra teacher in faith that somehow the funds will be provided as needed. This increased attendance shows growing appreciation of the opportunities offered and the people are getting more able and are helping more to support the school than ever before, at which we rejoice and are encouraged. Now if our friends will do their part we believe we will pull through all right, but so far we are very considerably behind last year's record of gifts at this time. The delay in sending out this letter several months later than last year may be responsible. Please forgive us and send as promptly as possible.
Our removal to Pensacola seems to be bearing fruit already in developing increased initiative and executive ability in our colored workers at Beloit. The growing school attendance and helpfulness in the community seems an indication.
We had a large number of circulars printed at Beloit just before Mrs. Curtis' sickness precipitated our moving to Pensacola.3 With the exception of our address as on this envelope and the lamented death of Dr. Pond,4 they give a good description of our work and so we still enclose them while they last, hoping they will serve to refresh your memory and perhaps be helpful to hand to others.5
Most cordially yours, C. B. Curtis Pres[?]Correspondent: Rev. Charles Burritt Curtis (1848–1946) was a White Congregational minister from Wisconsin who graduated from Beloit College in 1870 and from Yale Divinity school in 1873. He founded the Industrial Missionary Association of Alabama in 1888, which owned 4,000 acres of land in rural Alabama intended to support a rural Black community he named Beloit after his alma mater. After his marriage to his third wife, Harriet Peasley Curtis (1864–1951), the couple fundraised for and managed for the Beloit Mission and its school, first in Beloit and from 1920 on from Pensacola, FL.
1. The Industrial Mission Association of Alabama and its school, the Beloit Industrial Institute, were founded in 1888 by Charles Burritt Curtis. The Institute operated until 1923 in Beloit, an unincorporated community in Dallas County near Selma, Alabama. By 1916, the only school in operation was an elementary school, one of only two county schools (both private) open to rural Black students, and served about 150 students with 6 teachers. A government report noted that "management is almost entirely in the hands of the president and his wife, who is the treasurer of the association" while the Black trustees "have but little authority" (Department of the Interior Bureau of Education, Negro Education: A Study of the Private and Higher Schools for Colored People in the United States, Vol. II. [Washington: Government Printing Office, 1917] pp. 41–42). In 1923, the Dallas County school board took over the school and made it the Dallas County Training School to train Black teachers, with a new main building erected in 1929. Curtis and his wife continued to raise funds for the Industrial Mission Association to support the Training School, other local schools, and vocational education for the area into the 1940s. [back]
2. Chesnutt noted a donation of $5.00 by hand on three of the four letters sent to him by the Industrial Missionary Association that have been preserved. [back]
3. Harriet Peasley Curtis (1864–1951), the White treasurer of the Industrial Missionary Association, was originally from Ohio, graduated from The Ohio State University in 1885, and married Charles Burritt Curtis, the president of the association in 1908. The couple had no children. It is not known what health concern prompted the move to Pensacola, Florida, roughly 170 miles south of Beloit, Alabama. [back]
4. Rev. Chauncey Northrop Pond (1841–1920) was a White Congregational minister, lecturer, and editor of religious periodicals from Ohio who had ties to Oberlin College and a number of Ohio Congregational churches. Involved in national and international missionary work, he was the Northern secretary of the Industrial Mission Association of Alabama in its early years (1895–1907). He had died on June 12, 1920 in Oberlin, Ohio. [back]
5. The mentioned circular, dating from just before the Curtises' relocation in 1920, has not survived, but the Association seems to have disseminated pamphlets regularly and also published a magazine, The Plantation Missionary, from 1890 to 1918. An early version of the circular (ca. 1890) notes the many Midwestern ties of the organization: the Northern Office of the Association was located in Oberlin, Ohio, and among the listed members of the "Prudential Committee" were several Oberlin ministers, as well as Chesnutt acquaintance Charles F. Thwing (1853–1937), President of Western Reserve University in Cleveland. [back]
