Charles B. Curtis to Charles W. Chesnutt, 2 February 1931
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INDUSTRIAL MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION1
School and Industrial Work at Beloit, Ala.
Rev. C.B. Curtis, Pres.
Mrs. H.P. Curtis, Treas.2
Executive Office and Correspondence
at 1827 E. Mallory St., Pensacola, Fla.
February 2, 1931.
Dear Friends:-
Here comes my first letter of the new year, not quite as urgent perhaps as some of my appeals of last year, for the fine new building is finished and equipped----a beautiful tribute to your splendid co-operation and help in time of trouble.
But the new departments and growth in numbers of the school necessarily increase its expenses and the interest and part of the principal debt will come due very soon, while the unusual financial depression among the farmers of Alabama makes it impossible for them to help as much as they would love to do.
Therefore we must depend largely upon you, our old and long tried friends, though we know many of you are also suffering from the general depression and the consequent multiplied calls for giving.3
Of course we do not mean to put our cause above all the other urgent calls upon your generosity. Only the Divine Spirit within, promised by our Lord, can decide for you which is most imperative just now.
But this is only to tell of our need, to ask your continued prayers for the School and an earnest and prayerful consideration of the present duty and privilege of helping again.
And the wisdom promised to all who ask of God believing shall be given.
Your Friend and Fellow Worker, C. B. CURTIS, Pres. I. M. A.
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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 four thousand acres of land in rural Alabama intended to support a rural Black community, which he named Beloit after his alma mater. After Curtis's marriage to his third wife, Harriet Peasley Curtis (1864–1951), the couple fundraised for and managed the Beloit Mission and its school, first in Beloit and after 1920 in Pensacola, Florida.
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 six 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 [Washington: Government Printing Office, 1917], 2:41–42). 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. 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 in 1908 married Charles Burritt Curtis, the president of the association. [back]
3. On three previous fundraising letters from Charles Burritt Curtis on behalf of the Industrial Mission Association, Chesnutt noted that he sent $5.00. [back]
