Edward C. Williams to Charles W. Chesnutt, 3 December 1921
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Howard University1
Washington, DC
CARNEGIE LIBRARY
E. C. WILLIAMS, Librarian
J. STANLEY DURKEE, A.M., Ph.D.President2
President
EMMETT J. SCOTT, A.M., L.L.D.3
Secretary-Treasurer
Dec. 3, 1921
Harry L. Davis4
Governor of Ohio
Columbus, Ohio
Dear Sir:
I have great pleasure in recommending to your favorable notice Miss Lula Allan, who is an applicant for a position in the Ohio State Library.5 Miss Allen is, I believe, a native of Columbus, and her people Ohioans by long residence.
Miss Allan is a professional librarian, having had an experience of eleven years in the library of Howard University, and is one of the most experienced colored workers in the library field. I can give you no better idea of the value we place on her services than to say that it was to our great regret that she had to leave us, owing to the fact that she was needed in her home in Columbus, and that we should be most happy to have her with us again if we could get her. She is a woman of sterling character and a conscientious worker.
May I say that I am a Buckeye by birth and long residence, being a Clevelander by birth and education, and a graduate of Central High School6 and Western Reserve University, where I served for years as librarian.7 I left Cleveland when called East in 1909 to take charge of one of the high schools here in Washington.8 You undoubtedly know my father-in-law, Mr. Charles W. Chesnutt, of Cleveland.
I shall be most grateful for any consideration you may give Miss Allan's case. In placing her, I feel that you will be doing well not only by her, but by the State Library as well.
Very respectfully yours, LibrarianMiss Allan9 & Mrs. McAdoo10 would greatly appreciate a word from you to the Governor in Miss Allan's favor.
E. C. W.Correspondent: Edward Christopher Williams (1871–1929), the son of a Black father and a White mother of Irish descent, was from Cleveland, Ohio. He graduated from Western Reserve University's Adelbert College in 1892 and became its head librarian (1894–1909), also receiving an M.A. in library science at the New York Library School in 1899. He had known the Chesnutts at least since the 1890s and married Chesnutt's daughter Ethel in the fall of 1902; their son Charles (Charlie) was born in 1903. In 1909 the family moved to Washington, D. C., where Williams served as principal of M Street High School (1909–1916) and then as director of Howard University's library (1916–1929), where he also taught library science and foreign languages. He wrote a play performed at Howard University, as well as poetry and fiction for the Black literary magazine The Messenger in the 1920s. During the summer, Williams often worked at the Harlem branch of the New York Public Library at 135th Street, and in 1929 he enrolled in a Ph.D. program in library science at Columbia University in New York City, but in December of that year he died unexpectedly after a brief illness.
1. A private university in Washington, D. C., Howard University was founded in 1867 by Oliver Otis Howard (1830–1909), the commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau from 1865 to 1874, as one of the first Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Chesnutt visited Howard University on his first trip to Washington in 1879 (The Journals of Charles W. Chesnutt, ed. Richard Brodhead [Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993], 116). His son-in-law Edward C. Williams (1871–1929) was head librarian at Howard from 1916 until his death in 1929; his son-in-law John G. Slade (1890–1976) attended Howard Medical School; and his grandson Charles Waddell Chesnutt Williams (1909–1940) earned a B.A. and law degree from Howard. [back]
2. James Stanley Durkee (1866–1951) was a White Congregationalist minister who served as president of Howard University from 1918 until 1926, where he was widely criticized by trustees, faculty, and students for a conservative administration and hostile climate. He resigned in March 1926 and was replaced by Mordecai Wyatt Johnson (1890–1976), Howard's first Black President (1926–1960). Durkee then served as minister at Plymouth Church in Boston (1926–1941). [back]
3. 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 correspondence with Chesnutt spanned over three decades. [back]
4. Harry Lyman Davis (1878–1950) was a White Republican from Cleveland, Ohio, who served three terms as Cleveland's mayor (1916–1920) before becoming Ohio's 49th Governor (1921–1923). Shortly after Chesnutt's death, he was elected mayor of Cleveland for one more term (1934–1935). [back]
5. The Ohio State Library (now the State Library of Ohio) in Columbus, Ohio, was founded in 1817 by the governor as a government agency exclusively for state legislators; it was opened to the public in 1853. From the beginning, it was overseen by a librarian appointed by the governor, but in 1921, a newly created State Library Board was given the power to appoint and remove the State Librarian. [back]
6. Central High School was established in Cleveland in 1846 as the first public high school in the city. From 1878 to 1940 it was located at 2201 Willson Ave. (today's E. 55th St. at Central Avenue). Chesnutt's children attended the school, as did his son-in-law Edward C. Williams (1871–1929). His daughter Helen (1880–1969) taught Latin there as Cleveland's first Black secondary-school teacher starting in 1904; the poet Langston Hughes (1902–1967) was one of her Latin students. [back]
7. Western Reserve University was originally founded outside of Cleveland, Ohio, as Western Reserve College; it became Western Reserve University in 1882 as the campus moved to the city. (Later combined with the adjacent Case School of Applied Sciences, it is now Case Western Reserve University.) Chesnutt had many personal and professional ties to the university, especially through its law school and its library, where his son-in-law Edward C. Williams was head librarian (1894–1909). Chesnutt's daughter Dorothy attended the university's College for Women (1909–1913). Chesnutt also personally knew Charles F. Thwing (1853–1937), the university's president from 1891 to 1921. [back]
8. M St. High School in Washington, DC, was established by Congress in 1870 as a public high school to prepare Black students for university; it received the name when it moved to a newly-erected building at 128 M St. in 1891. The school moved again in 1916 and was renamed Dunbar High School. Chesnutt's son-in-law Edward C. Williams (1871–1929) was the last principal of M St. High School before the renaming (1909–1916). [back]
9. Lula Allen (also Allan, 1879–1968), was a Black woman from Columbus, Ohio, the younger sister of Mattie Allen McAdoo (1868–1936). They sometimes performed together as singers and were personal friends of the Chesnutts. Although she did not hold a library science degree, Allen became cataloguer and then assistant librarian at Howard University in Washington, D. C., in the early 1910s, eventually under Chesnutt's son-in-law Edward C. Williams (1871–1929), who would become Howard's head librarian. Both Chesnutt and Williams wrote her recommendations for a position at the Ohio State Library in 1921 when she returned to Columbus. However, Allen does not seem to have worked there and by the late 1920s she had moved back Washington, D. C., and served as head librarian at the Miner Normal School, a teachers' college for Black women adjacent to the Howard University campus. [back]
10. Mattie Allen McAdoo (1868–1936), a Black singer and activist, and the mother of Myron McAdoo (1893–1960), was originally from Columbus, Ohio, and after the death of her husband Orpheus Myron McAdoo (1858–1900) lived in Cleveland before moving to Boston, Massachusetts, with her son. She toured with her husband's Virginia Concert Company and Jubilee Singers in the 1880s and 1890s and later performed with her sister Lula Allen (also Allan, 1879–1968[?]). By 1921 she had moved to Washington, D. C., where Ethel Chesnutt Williams also lived and worked; McAdoo was active in the NAACP, the Phillis Wheatley YWCA, and numerous charitable causes. [back]
