Charles W. Chesnutt to Harry C. Smith, 17 May 1922 Charles W. Chesnutt Stephanie P. Browner Kenneth M. Price Transcription, encoding, and annotation Anderson, Antje Millhorn, Lauren Weakly, Laura K. Barney, Brett Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln The New School 2025 The Charles W. Chesnutt Archive
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 Charles W. Chesnutt to Harry C. Smith, 17 May 1922 May 17, 1922 Transcription derived from scan of original. Western Reserve Historical Society Charles Waddell Chesnutt Papers MS 3370 1 2 Correspondence King, William H. Willis, Frank B. Haiti typed copy unsigned Chesnutt, Charles W. (Waddell) Cleveland, Ohio Smith, Harry C. Cleveland, Ohio Brett Barney checked; corrected Laura K. Weakly review Antje Anderson annotated, made further corrections Lauren Millhorn transcribed, encoded
May 17, 1922.
Honorable Harry C. Smith, Care The Cleveland Gazette, Blackstone Building, City.
Dear Mr. Smith:

I enclose you copy of the pamphlet of which I spoke to you, and also a suggestion of the sort of a letter I would write to Senator Willis if I were in your place. I am not trying to write your letter for you, and I have no doubt you will write a very different and a much better one, but this is merely a suggestion. If you could comment on the matter in the Gazette and send the Senator a marked copy, I have no doubt that your letter and editorial would have a great deal of influence. We have got to bring some pressure to bear down there if we want to save the only free colored nations of the western continent.

Very truly yours, CWC/FL
May 17, 1922.
Honorable Frank B. Willis, U. S. Senate, Washington, D. C.
My dear Senator Willis:

As editor of The Cleveland Gazette, which circulates widely in Ohio, especially among your colored constituents, as well as in other states, I am in a position to keep informed of the prevailing sentiments among colored Americans with regard to matters in which they are interested. I have read the lawyers' report on the "Seizure of Haiti" of which you doubtless have been furnished a copy, and I agree with its conclusions. I express my own opinion and I believe that of the majority of the colored people and of many white people with whom I have talked, when I respectfully urge you as our representative in the Senate, to support Senator King's resolutions pending before the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate, Nos. 219, 233 and 256, calling for the withdrawal of our forces from Haiti, opposing any loan to Haiti under conditions which would give the United States complete control of the Haitain government, under the color of right, for many years to come, and providing a practical means of withdrawing the American forces and the restoration of the ‸government of Haiti & Santo Domingo to the people of the island. The United States is in possession of Haiti without any right and we believe without any sufficient excuse, and the continuance of the occupation sounds the death knell of the only two independent colored nations in America. If the U. S. Administration is so interested in orderly government, it might try to find some way, constitutional or otherwise, to stop lynchings and burnings and peonage and enforce the Fifteenth Amendment in the South.

Respectfully yours, Editor Cleveland Gazette.