Charles W. Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, 19 October 1908 Charles W. Chesnutt Stephanie Browner Kenneth M. Price Matt Cohen Transcription and encoding Swift, Bianca Matheis, Caitlin S. Anderson, Antje Weakly, Laura K. Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln The New School University of Nebraska-Lincoln UCARE Program 2022 The Charles W. Chesnutt Archive
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 Charles W. Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, 19 October 1908 October 19, 1908 Transcription derived from scan of microfilmed original. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress Booker T. Washington papers, 1853-1946 https://lccn.loc.gov/mm78044669 MSS44669 39 36 Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Correspondence Vardaman, James K. Mississippi Georgia typed letter signed Chesnutt, Charles W. Cleveland, Ohio Washington, Booker T. Tuskegee, Alabama Unknown Laura K. Weaklycommented out links to unpublished prev/next Laura K. Weaklyproofed Antje Andersonannotated Caitlin Matheisproofed Bianca Swifttranscribed and encoded
CHAS. W. CHESNUTT 1105 WILLIAMSON BUILDING CLEVELAND, O.
Cleveland, Ohio, Oct. 19, 1908.
Dr. Booker T. Washington, Tuskegee Institute, Ala.,
My dear Doctor Washington:-

I was reading yesterday in a copy of the Boston Transcript for October 12, I think was the date, an account of a lynching in Mississippi, where the victims were left hanging beside the railroad track where you would pass on your way from one town to another. The statement was coupled with utterances ascribed to Mr. Vardaman and others that if you made half a dozen more speeches in Mississippi there would be a good many more lynchings.

I was very sorry to read this. Things must be in a very bad way down there when even your helpful and pacific utterances create such a feeling. I very much fear that the South does not mean, if it can prevent it, to permit education or business or anything else to make of the Negro anything more than an agricultural serf.

I see Georgia has disfranchised the Negro. I wonder how much further the process will go before there is a revival of a liberal spirit. I try to be optimistic about these matters, but conditions are not encouraging.

Yours very truly, Chas. W. Chesnutt.