Charles W. Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, 12 March 1906
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CHAS. W. CHESNUTT,
1105 Williamson Building,
Cleveland.
March 12, 1906.
Dr. Booker T. Washington,
Tuskegee Institute,
Tuskegee, Ala.
My dear Mr. Washington:-
I received yesterday the article for Miss Kline,1 and handed it to her this morning. She asked me to express her thanks to you, and we expect that the contribution will add materially to the interest and value of the publication.2
I was down in New York several days last week, and put up at the Manhattan Hotel.3 I inquired for you at the desk, and regretted that you did not come to the hotel while I was in the city. I presume you are very busy with the preparations for your anniversary,4 which I hope will prove an even greater success than the succession of successes which have marked the history of Tuskegee.5
Sincerely yours, Chas. W. Chesnutt.Only to be noted
3/16
Correspondent: Booker T. Washington (1856–1913), one of the most well-known Black activists of the early 20th century, was born into slavery in Virginia; in 1881, he became the principal of what would become the Tuskegee Institute, advocating widely as a speaker and writer for technical education for Blacks, whose entry into American industry and business leadership he believed to be the road to equality. His political power was significant, but because he frequently argued for compromise with White Southerners, including on voting rights, he was also criticized by other Black activists, especially by W. E. B. Du Bois.
1. Mary Kline Pope (1877–1964) was the older of the daughters of Virgil P. Kline, prominent Cleveland lawyer and acquaintance of Chesnutt's. Both Mary Kline Pope and her sister Minerva Kline Brooks (1883–1929) graduated from Hathaway Brown, a private school for girls. By 1906, Mary Kline was the president of the school's alumnae association and in that capacity approached Chesnutt (and through him Booker T. Washington) to contribute articles to the magazine that was part of her fundraiser to support the completion of the new school buildings at Logan St.[back]
2. Only one issue of the Hathaway Brown Magazine was printed, to be sold for fundraising purposes in April 1906 by the alumnae association of the Hathaway Brown School. It included Chesnutt's story "The Prophet Peter"(pp. 51–66) and Booker T. Washington's "The Negro Rural School" (pp. 68–70), which Washington enclosed in his March 9, 1906, letter to Chesnutt.[back]
3. The Hotel Manhattan (or Manhattan Hotel), opened in 1896 and demolished in 1960s, was a 16-story hotel designed by Henry J. Hardenbergh (1847–1918) and located at the northwest corner of Madison Avenue and 42nd Street near Grand Central Station in Manhattan. It was Booker T. Washington's preferred residence when in New York. [back]
4. On April 4, 1905, the 25th anniversary of the Tuskegee Institute was celebrated on site in Tuskegee, Alabama, with many prominent White and Black dignitaries present; Chesnutt was formally invited, but did not attend.[back]
5. The Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), in Tuskegee, Alabama, evolved from the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers, founded in 1881, with Booker T. Washington as its principal. It became a leading educational institution for Blacks in the South, emphasizing teacher training and industrial education. Chesnutt, who had himself been the principal of a Black normal school in the early 1880s, first visited Tuskegee in February 1901, and remained well-informed about and personally connected with the institution all his life.[back]
