W. E. B. Du Bois to Charles W. Chesnutt, 28 July 1925
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EDITORIAL ROOMS OF
THE CRISIS1
69 FIFTH AVENUE., NEW YORK, N.Y.
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE
W.E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS
July 28, 19252
Mr. Charles W. Chestnutt
1106 Willamson Building3
Cleveland, Ohio
My dear Mr. Chestnutt:
Some time ago, if you remember, you promised to act as judge in our short story contest.4 I am sending you herewith four short stories.5 Could you possibly read them right off and let me have your judgment of them? I should be so pleased.
I hope this will find you well.
Very sincerely yours, W.E.B. DuBois WEBD/KFCorrespondent: William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868–1963) was a sociologist, historian, and world-renowned civil rights activist. After completing coursework at the University of Berlin and Harvard University, Du Bois became the first African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard in 1895. He was a professor of history, sociology, and economics at Atlanta University (1897–1910 and again in the 1930s). He was a prominent leader of the Niagara Movement and helped found the NAACP in 1909. As the editor of the NAACP's journal, The Crisis, from 1910 to 1931, Du Bois published four of Chesnutt's short stories as well as two of his essays. See "The Doll" (April 1912), "Mr. Taylor's Funeral" (April/May 1915), "The Marked Tree" (Dec 1924/Jan 1925), and "Concerning Father" (May 1930); and "Women's Rights" (1915) and "The Negro in Art" (November 1926).
1. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) began in February 1909, with a Committee on the Negro and "The Call," a statement protesting lawlessness against Black people. In 1910, the organization adopted its current name and began publication of a monthly journal, The Crisis, under editor W. E. B. Du Bois. Chesnutt's involvement with the NAACP extended over many years, and included attending conferences, presiding at NAACP events in Cleveland, publishing four stories and one essay in The Crisis (1912, 1915, 1924, 1926, and 1930), and being awarded in 1928 the organization's highest honor, the Spingarn Medal. [back]
2. By the summer of 1925, Chesnutt's business, Chesnutt & Moore, had already moved the offices to 1646 Union Trust Building, but Du Bois and his staff erroneously used his previous address, 1106 Williamson Building. [back]
3. The Williamson Building, occupied by many prominent Cleveland firms, was a lavish 17-story office building with marble floors and walls on Public Square in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. It stood on the site of the homestead of Samuel Williamson (1776–1834), and in these years was owned by the Williamson Corporation, which was founded by his son Samuel Williamson, Jr. (1808–1884), a railroad-company director, banker, and lawyer whose own son, Judge Samuel E. Williamson (1844–1903) provided Chesnutt with his legal training in the 1880s. Chesnutt's stenography and law practice had three different offices (1005, 1105, and 1106) in the building between 1901 and 1924. [back]
4. In 1925, The Crisis held its inaugural contest for what were initially called the Amy Spingarn Prizes in literature and art. The three fiction prizes (for $100, $50, and $20) were announced in August 1925 and printed in The Crisis in the following months. Chesnutt evaluated submissions, as did White writers H. G. Wells (1866–1946), Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951), and Mary White Ovington (1865–1951). Chesnutt again judged stories for the prize in 1926, alongside White writers Ernest Poole (1880–1950) and Otelia Cromwell (1874–1972). [back]
5. The four short stories sent to Chesnutt to evaluate for the first Amy Spingarn Contest were, in the order in which he ranked them: "There Never Fell A Night So Dark," by Mary Louise French, a young composer and writer from Colorado Springs; "High Yaller: A Story" by Rudolph Fisher (1897–1925), a physician and writer who became an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance; "Three Dogs and a Rabbit," by Anita Scott Coleman (1890–1960), a Black short story writer based in New Mexico; and "Easy Pickin's," by an author whose name has been lost. Awards in all categories were announced at a banquet held in New York City on August 14, 1925, and the winners were named in the "Krigwa" column (The Crisis 30, no. 6 [October 1925]: 275–276. Three stories won awards and were published. Fisher's story won first (The Crisis 30, no. 6 [October 1925]: 281–286 and The Crisis 31, no. 1 [November 1925]: 33–38). French's won second (The Crisis 31, no. 2 [December 1925]: 73–76); and Coleman's won third (The Crisis 31, no. 3 [January 1926]: 118–122). [back]
