Letters and Other Texts Illuminate Smith Journey of
Charles W. Chesnutt’s Daughters Ethel and Helen,
1897-1901
By Pamela E. Foster ’85, M.S.J.
Nat’l Special Projects Chair, Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society
Smith College’s
First Black Students
Helen Maria Chesnutt (1881-1969), Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College.
Ethel Perry Chesnutt (1879-1958), Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College.
Contrary to the college archives’ statement that, “The legacy of the Black Students Alliance at Smith College begins in 1898 when the first African American student, Otelia Cromwell, matriculated,” Ethel and Helen Chesnutt are the first Black women known to enter Smith College.
They entered as freshmen in 1897, a year before Otelia Cromwell entered as a junior and twenty-two years after the college opened in 1875, following its 1871 charter. They graduated in 1901. Cromwell graduated in 1900.
Smith College’s first two known Black students
Otelia Cromwell, the first known African-American graduate of Smith College, in 1900, is marching with her classmates on Ivy Day 1900 (from M.M. Roys Papers).
Otelia Cromwell came to Smith as a junior in 1898, after earning a teaching certificate at Miner Normal School, formerly affiliated with Howard University, and teaching for several years. At Howard the Miner Building now features a plaque honoring founder Myrtilla Miner and serves as part of the university’s School of Education.
The 1898 and 1899 Smith circulars show that during her junior year both Otelia and sophomore Inez Louise Wiggin lived at 190 Roundhill Road and that in her senior year Otelia and no other student lived at 275 Main Street. The college reports that Otelia lived at the home of Julia Caverno, professor of Greek.
After receiving advanced degrees from Columbia and Yale universities Otelia returned to her hometown of Washington, D.C., to supervise teachers of English and history in the public schools. Eventually, she was appointed professor of English at renamed Miner Teachers College.
Cromwell was a prolific writer largely about education, publishing three books and many articles in scholarly journals. She co-edited Readings from Negro Authors for Schools and Colleges, one of the first anthologies of the literary contributions of African-American writers. Late in her life her biography of Lucretia Mott was published by Harvard University Press.
In 1989 Smith instituted an annual Otelia Cromwell Day.
Smith College’s first known Black graduate
Otelia Cromwell at her desk the year she graduated from Smith College, 1900. This is presumably at 275 Main Street, where the college circular says she lived during her senior year with no other students, after living at 190 Round Hill in her junior year with one other student, sophomore Inez Louise Wiggin of Warsaw, N.Y. To honor her as Smith’s first Black graduate, Otelia Cromwell Day was instituted in 1989.
The legacy of the Black Students Alliance at Smith College begins in 1898 when the first African American student, Otelia Cromwell, matriculated. Seventy years later the Black Students Alliance (BSA) was officially chartered to "establish for its members a sense of unity and identity within the smaller community of Smith College while at the same time emphasizing their common interest in, and relationship to, the larger Black community of the nation." Learn more about the BSA's history through this exhibition.
Corrected as of 2-15-2016
When Otelia Cromwell was at Smith, there were only two other African American students on campus. Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, both Class of 1901, were the daughters of Harlem Renaissance writer Charles W. Chesnutt.
How each dealt with the fact that they were the only people of color on the campus is unknown. We do know they all lived off-campus: Otelia Cromwell on Round Hill Road, then later Main Street; the Chesnutt sisters at 30 Green Street [after previously living at 95 West Street freshman year, 10 Green Street sophomore year, and 36 Green Street junior year].
There is little to no personal material about the Chesnutt sisters in the College Archives. A single piece of information from an entry in English Professor Mary Jordan's diary suggests they were unhappy with their Smith College experience. The entry notes the "Chesnutt girls are having a hard time with the color line…."
As of January 2014
Partially corrected as of 2-15-2016
Published March 7, 2016
Five buildings that make up a new 80-bed student apartment complex at Smith will be named for graduates from diverse backgrounds to reflect the college’s history of pioneering alumnae.
The new buildings will be known as: Cromwell House, after Otelia Cromwell, class of 1900, Smith’s first African American student; DeCora House, after Angel DeCora, class of 1896, Smith’s first Native American student; Hashimy House, after Sabiha Yassin Hashimy, class of 1937, Smith’s first Middle Eastern student; Machado House, after Salomé Amelia Machado, class of 1883, Smith’s first Latina student; and Ninomiya House, after Tei Ninomiya, class of 1910, Smith’s first Asian student.
The names were approved by the Smith College Board of Trustees at its March 5 meeting.
“The names of our houses are important signals of what we value,” President Kathleen McCartney said. “This is an opportunity to honor women who were pioneers as well as to underscore our commitment to make Smith a more inclusive community.”
The apartment complex, Smith’s first new student residence in a decade, will be known as the Friedman Complex. The Friedman name currently references a group of apartments on Henshaw Avenue, named for Robert and Eugenie Friedman, Smith College class of 1947. The original Friedman apartments will be renamed the Henshaw Complex and will serve as temporary office space during the renovation of Neilson Library.
The new apartments, located on Paradise Road and designed by the Seattle-based architecture firm of Olson Kundig, incorporate sustainable design standards targeted for LEED Gold certification. They will be dedicated at a ribbon-cutting ceremony in May in the company of the Smith College Board of Trustees. Students and faculty from the Smith College School for Social Work will stay in the apartments this summer, with the first undergraduates moving in for fall 2016.
About the Five Alumnae
Salomé Amelia Machado – 1883
Salomé Amelia Machado was the first Latina to attend Smith College. Born in Cuba in 1861, she graduated with the class of 1883. Today, she is known not only as the first Latina at Smith, but as the first woman from outside the United States to be admitted to the college. In a letter to her brother, Machado described Smith as “a perfect Paradise. Not a bit too much has been said about the beauty of its natural surroundings—nor has anything been said in favor of the College which is not true. It is really quite an ideal place.”
Angel DeCora – 1896
Angel DeCora was the first Native American to attend Smith and was a member of the class of 1896. The descendant of two prominent French Canadian-Winnebago Native American chiefs, and a member of the Thunderbird clan, DeCora’s tribal name was Hinook-Mahiwi-Kalinaka (Fleecy Cloud Floating in Space). DeCora attended Smith from 1892 to 1896. After graduating from Smith, DeCora studied at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry in Philadelphia. DeCora went on to design and illustrate a number of books on Native American subjects, as well as produce a number of designs for The Indians’ Book (published in 1907). In 1906, she accepted a position at Carlisle Indian School to teach Native American art.
Otelia Cromwell – 1900
Otelia Cromwell was the first African American to graduate from Smith College. Cromwell transferred from Howard University to Smith in 1898 and graduated in 1900. Cromwell’s life and work were characterized by a deep sense of justice and responsibility toward others, a quality that was reinforced when her mother died in 1886, leaving 12-year-old Otelia in charge of her younger siblings. She taught for a number of years, and then resumed her education, receiving a master’s degree from Columbia University and a doctorate from Yale University in 1926. Cromwell was the first African American woman to receive a Yale degree. She soon became a professor and chair of the Department of English Language and Literature at Miner Teachers College in Washington, D.C.
Tei Ninomiya – 1910
Tei Ninomiya was the first Asian student to graduate from Smith College. Born in 1887, in Matsuyama, Shikoku, Japan, she graduated from Smith in 1910. Upon graduating, Ninomiya returned to Japan, married, and spent much of her adult life as a teacher, YWCA administrator and Red Cross worker. At Smith, Ninomiya was a member of the Alpha Society, Smith’s first literary society; the Philosophical Society; Colloquium (Chemistry Society); Telescopium (Astronomy Club); and the Oriental Club, whose members were interested in the ethical, social and religious ideas originating in East Asia.
Sabiha Yassin Hashimy – 1937
Sabiha Yassin Hashimy was the first Middle Eastern student to graduate from Smith College. Living in Baghdad, Iraq, at the time of her matriculation, she transferred to Smith from the American Junior College for Women located in what is now Beirut, Lebanon. She returned to Iraq after graduating from Smith, serving as the principal of the Kirch Secondary School for Girls in Baghdad for 14 years and traveling widely in Europe and the Middle East.
Family letters/texts illuminate Smith life and beyond
Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line
To Be an Author: Letters of Charles W. Chesnutt, 1889-1905
An Exemplary Citizen: Letters of Charles W. Chesnutt, 1906-1932
The Journals of Charles W. Chesnutt
The Charles W. Chesnutt Library at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina has digitized many of the family papers and published a bibliography
Chesnutt Papers at Fisk University
4 Components
Charles Waddell Chesnutt, c. 1905. Author of The Marrow of Tradition, The Colonel’s Dream, Mandy Oxendine, The Wife of His Youth, and other works.
Acclaimed as America’s first great Black novelist, Charles Waddell Chesnutt had three novels and an array of short stories published between 1885 and 1905, not during the Harlem Renaissance as the Smith Archives say, that critics claim depict race sensibilities during the reconstruction era better than anyone else’s work.
Reared in both Cleveland, Ohio, and Fayetteville, N.C., Chesnutt frequently chose those locales as settings for his stories, several of which were published posthumously.
Some of his works were recreated for film, including The House Behind the Cedars/Rena, remade as the Oscar Micheaux film Veiled Aristocrats, and The Doll, produced by award-winning scholar and independent maker of dramatic and documentary films Dante James under the auspices of DMD Films. This company also plans to make a film of Chesnutt’s most heralded work, The Marrow of Tradition.
With the 31st stamp in its Black Heritage series, the U.S. Postal Service honors Charles W. Chesnutt (1858–1932), a pioneering writer recognized today as a major innovator and singular voice among turn–of–the–century literary realists. In novels such as The Marrow of Tradition and short stories such as those collected in The Conjure Woman he probed the color line in American life. Issue Date: January 09, 2012. SKU:462876.
Charles Chesnutt timeline
1856 His mother, Ann Maria Sampson, a free informal teacher, and her
mother, Chloe, move to Cleveland, Ohio, from Fayetteville, N.C., in
a wagon train party that includes his father, Andrew Chesnutt
1857, July 26 Ann Maria Sampson marries Andrew Jackson Chesnutt in Cleveland
and the couple lives with her mother on Hudson Street. Andrew
works as driver-conductor on the new Kinsman Street Omnibus Line
horsecars
1858, June 20 Charles Waddell Chesnutt born, imbued with honorable ideals,
principles and destiny, and family moves to Oberlin, Ohio. Andrew
took job as his uncle’s wheelwright assistant
1858, Sept. Andrew arrested for helping to retrieve a captured slave in
Oberlin-Wellington rescue case, in violation of the 1793 and
1850 Fugitive Slave Acts
1860 Brother Lewis born and family returns to Cleveland from Oberlin
1861-1865 Andrew serves as Union Army teamster
1866-1867 Andrew Chesnutt moves family to Fayetteville, N.C., from Cleveland,
Ohio, to be with his ailing father, a white man who acknowledged his
children by his Black mistress and got Andrew both interested in
education and set up in owning and operating a grocery store on
Gillespie Street. Later Republican Andrew becomes Cumberland
County commissioner and justice of the peace. Charles attends the
Howard School, operated on high standards of morality and
scholarship, and later helps his father in the grocery store,
absorbing the customs of the local characters.
1866 Con’t. At age 9 saw a man killed
1871 Mother dies. Grandmother Chloe and her husband, Moses
Harris, who had moved to Fayetteville from Cleveland to help
care for family, now run the Andrew Chesnutt household. First cousin once removed Mary Olchiltree moves in to help with children and attend the Howard School. Andrew later takes Mary as his second wife
1872 Father’s grocery store fails and family moves to farm outside
Fayetteville. Charles becomes pupil-teacher under principal
Robert Harris at the Howard School in Fayetteville
1873 Charles becomes assistant principal under principal Cicero
Harris at the Peabody School in Charlotte, NC
1877 Charles becomes assistant principal under principal at the
State Colored Normal School in Fayetteville
1878, June 6 Susan Perry, a teacher at the Howard School and daughter of
Fayetteville Hotel barber shop proprietor, marries Charles
1879, April Daughter Ethel born
1880 Declines Republican nomination for Fayetteville town
commissioner. Becomes principal at the State Colored Normal
School in Fayetteville. Daughter Helen born in December
1883 Resigns as principal at the State Colored Normal School in
Fayetteville in May.
Howard School, a training school for Negro teachers in Fayetteville, North Carolina, which became the State Colored Normal School and then Fayetteville State University. This is where Charles was a pupil-teacher, asst. principal, and principal, c 1867-1883. Charles met teacher Susan Perry here and married her in 1878. After his 1883 resignation, Charles moved to New York, worked as a newspaper reporter, then moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he bgan his short story and novel writing while he ran a stenography business.
Moves to New York, where he works as reporter for the Dow, Jones and Co. news agency and writes Wall Street news column for New York Mail and Express. Son, Edwin, born in Fayetteville in September. Leaves New York in November and moves to Cleveland, where he works in accounting department of Nickel Plate Railroad Co.
1884 Brings wife and children from Fayetteville to live in rented house
on Wilcutt Avenue in Cleveland. Later family moves to house on
Ashland Avenue
1885-1886 Family moves to house on Florence Street. Transfers to
stenographer job in legal department of Nickel Plate Railroad Co., where he studies law with company counsel Samuel Williamson, a former county common pleas court judge. Sells first stories, published in various newspapers, including Cleveland News and Herald
1887-1888 The Goophered Grapevine in the Atlantic Monthly. Passes Ohio
bar exam with highest grade in his group. Works at law firm of
Henderson, Kline, and Tolles as stenographer. Other short
stories and sketches published while building stenography
business, including opening own office
1889 Begins correspondence with novelist George Washington
Cable, declines offer to become Cable’s secretary and visits
Cable in Northampton, MA. Family moves to newly built house
at 64 Brenton Street. Continues to publish essays and short
stories as he writes novel The House Behind the Cedars/Rena
Ethel, Edwin, and Helen in 1888, c ages 9, 5, and 7. Dorothy was born in 1890.
--Photographs of Charles W. Chesnutt and his family, gift of Helen Chesnutt to Cleveland Public Library.
Charles Chesnutt's library at 64 Brenton Street, which became 2212 E. 73rd St., Cleveland, Ohio. This is where the family lived from 1889 to 1904, including Ethel and Helen’s Smith years, and where Chesnutt wrote all of his books. The growing family had settled in Cleveland in 1884, where Charles worked in accounting, a law office, passed the bar, and opened a stenography business. First fiction published in 1886.
Context of earliest Black higher education in America,
including Smith’s history
Before the end of the Civil War, a total of about 40 Black students graduated from colleges and universities in the
United States. Smith was the fifth of the Seven Sisters to have a known Black graduate. --The JBHE
First known African-descended graduates of historically white U.S. higher education institutions*
Middlebury College* Alexander L. Twilight 1823**
Amherst College Edward Jones 1826
Bowdoin College John B. Russwurm 1826
Dartmouth College Edward Mitchell 1828
Oberlin College George B. Vashon 1844
Salem Normal School Charlotte Forten 1856
Yale College Richard Henry Green 1857
Yale School of Medicine Cortlandt Van Rensselaer Creed 1857
Wesleyan College Wilbur Fisk Burns 1860
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Harvard University Law School George Lewis Ruffin 1869
Harvard College Richard Theodore Greene 1870
Bates College Henry W. Chandler 1874
Brown University Inman Page/George Washington Milford 1877***
Grinnell College Hannibal Kershaw 1879
Mt. Holyoke College 1837 Hortense Parker 1883
Colby College Adam S. Green 1887
Colgate University Matthew W. Gilbert 1887
Wellesley College 1875 Harriet Alleyne Rice 1887
Hamilton College Joseph L. Spurlarke 1889
Williams College Gaius C. Bolin 1889
Cornell University ?? 1890
University of Pittsburgh William Hunter Dammond 1893
Vassar College 1865 Anita F. Hemmings 1897****
Radcliffe College 1879 Alberta Virginia Scott 1898
Smith College 1875 Otelia Cromwell 1900
Pomona College Winston M.C. Dickson 1904
Barnard College 1889 Zora Neale Hurston 1928
Bryn Mawr College 1885 Enid Cook 1931
*It is not known if John Chavis earned a bachelor's degree from Washington and Lee University, which he attended in 1799. After Chavis, no Black student attended the university until 1966.
**Middlebury College awarded an honorary master’s degree in 1804 to Lemuel Haynes, an African American who fought in the Revolutionary War.
***Student body president/ class historian
****Vassar College did not know that Anita Hemmings was an African American when she was admitted. The first student to graduate from Vassar who openly acknowledged her African-American heritage was Beatrix McCleary in 1940.
--http://www.jstor.org/stable/4133630 --http://www.jbhe.com/chronology/
In 1900, W. E. B. Du Bois found that there were around 2,600 living African Americans who had graduated from post-secondary institutions. (About 1 in every 1,000 Black adults from colleges, universities,
normal schools and seminaries)
The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education chronology shows that approximately 390 of the degrees then were from white colleges and universities, meaning about 2,200 were from HBCUs.
Historically Black colleges and universities
Antebellum
Cheyney University, Pennsylvania, was the first, in 1837
Miner Normal School, a teacher’s college for women, 1851, 1871-1875 affiliated with Howard
University and became the University of the District of Columbia
Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, started as Ashmun Institute, the first to rise to the college
or normal school level, started in 1854
Wilberforce University educated many planters’ children, beginning in 1856
Postbellum
Fisk University is founded in Nashville, Tennessee, 1866
Howard University is founded in Washington, D.C., 1867
Morehouse College (originally known as Augusta Institute) in Atlanta, Georgia, 1867
Saint Augustine’s College in Raleigh, North Carolina, founded by Episcopal Church, 1867
Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (now University) is founded in Virginia, 1868
By 1870, approximately 22 historically Black colleges and universities, mostly normal schools
By 1880, approximately 45 Black colleges and universities
Spelman Seminary, erroneously billed as the nation’s first historically Black college for women, is
founded in Atlanta, Georgia, 1881
Tuskegee Institute is established in Alabama with Booker T. Washington as its first principal,
1881
Post Reconstruction
Mary Holmes Seminary, women’s school in Mississippi, started in 1892
Black Mammy Memorial Institute, Athens, Georgia, started in 1910
At least 242 HBCUs were open by 1908, including at least 30 started by the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. both before and after it created a Board of Missions for Freedmen in 1865. The Presbyterian schools include
five seminaries for Black women:
01 Alice Lee Elliott Academy, Valliant, OK �
02 Arkadelphia Academy, Cotton Plant, AK �
03 Barber-Scotia Junior College, Concord, NC �
04 Boggs Academy, Keyesville, GA �
05 Bowling Green Academy and Students' Home,
Bowling Green, KY �06 Brainerd Institute, Chester, SC �
07 Coulter Memorial Academy, Cheraw, SC �
08 Fee Community Station and Memorial Institute,
Nicholasville, KY �09 Fisk University, Nashville, TN 1866 �
10 Gould Academy, Chadbourn, NC�
11 Harbison Institute, Irmo, SC �
12 Hodge Academy, Washington, GA�
13 Hot Springs Academy, Hot Springs, AK�
14 Ingleside/Ingleside-Fee Seminary, Burkeville, VA�
15 Irmo Church and Grade School, Irmo, SC
�
16 Johnson C. Smith University (formerly
Biddle Institute), Charlotte, NC 1867
17 Kendall Institute, Sumter, SC �
18 Larimer High School, Edisto Island, SC �
19 Lincoln University, Lincoln, PA 1854�
20 Margaret Barber Seminary, Anniston, AL�
21 Mary Allen Junior College, Crockett, TX�
22 Mary Holmes Seminary, West Point, MS 1892�
23 Mary Potter-Redstone-Albion Academy,
Oxford, NC
24 McClelland Academy, Newman, GA�
25 Monticello Academy, Monticello, AK�
26 Mt. Nebo School, Lone Star, SC�
27 Nannie J. Gillespie-Selden Normal and
Industrial School, Cordele, GA
28 Newton Community Center, Chattanooga, TN�
29 Richard Allen Institute, Pine Bluff, AK�
30 Swift Memorial Junior School, Rogersville, TN�
Chartered in 1871, opened in 1875, under the notion that “All education should be for the glory of God.”
Northampton was settled in 1654, and religious fervor was quickened by the ministry of Jonathan Edwards, whose preaching sparked the religious revivals of the Great Awakening in the 1740s.
In 1885 noted Southern unapologist author George Washington Cable (1844-1925) moved to Northampton because his portrayal of racial issues in his novels made him unwelcome in his native New Orleans.
Ethel and Helen’s Smith years, via family letters and texts
1896, fall Helen on choice of college, CWC 74
When Ethel and Helen began their senior year at Central High School, the important question was what college they would attend. Chesnutt had already decided that his children should have the best education that he could afford to give them. The memory of his own circumscribed youth, of the many difficulties that he had experienced when as a young man in the South he had worked so tirelessly to get an education, had made him resolve that his children should have a good education no matter what sacrifices were involved.
1896, fall Helen on choice of college, CWC 75
Western Reserve University was first considered. It was a fine college; it was in Cleveland; the girls could live at home; the expense would be slight; most of their classmates were going there--such were the advantages set forth by their parents. But the girls objected. This last year at high school was a disappointment to them. They had not said anything about it because there was really nothing to be said. They were enjoying their lessons very much; they loved their teachers; their scholarship rating was high; yet they were not entirely happy. So, they said, they would rather go to Normal School and begin teaching as soon as possible, than to plod out to Reserve for another four years of drudgery.
This heresy was a shock to Charles. With the greatest delight he had watched his daughters studying at the dining room table under the green-shaded student lamp which he had bought for them. Absorbed in their studies and delighting in the solution of the difficult points in their homework, they had seemed to him a very happy pair; they literally had to be driven to bed if their work was not finished, for there was a rule that by nine-thirty the studying must be over, and by ten o’clock the children must be in bed. During the half hour between, they ate a little lunch, milk with crackers or cookies, and chattered with Susan and Charles about the events of the day. So this attitude on their part was a blow to Charles and Susan. They wanted their children to live wholesome normal lives, and here were their young daughters, suffering disillusion and defeat before they were out of high school. They decided to find out what was wrong, and they very soon did.
The girls told them that when the Senior Class was organized, and its activities under way, they realized with shock and confusion that they were considered different from their classmates; they were being gently but firmly set apart, and had become self-conscious about it. They knew that if they went to Reserve this state of affairs would continue, and so they had made their decision.
Charles learned that one of their friends had explained the situation to them. “After all,” she had said, “you are Negroes. We know that you are nice girls, and everybody thinks the world of you; but Mother says that while it was all right for us to go together when we were younger, now that we are growing up, we must consider Society, and we just can’t go together anymore.”
When this dear friend came a day or two later to study some homework with the girls, Susan told her not to come again because her mother might object. “O, no,” replied the girl. “Mother does not mind my studying with Ethel and Helen; it is only in social relations that she objects.” “Indeed!” replied Susan. “Well, I object very seriously to your coming here to study with my girls -so please don’t come again.”
Charles recalled his visit to Northampton several years before (seven years ago in 1889) and, after discussing the matter with Susan, decided to send the girls to Smith College, where for four beautiful years they could breathe the air of New England, the cradle of democracy. When the decision was made, peace settled down upon the Chesnutt family….Susan was already planning the girls’ dresses for commencement, and their wardrobe for college….By February (of 1897) Chesnutt had written several stories and had made great progress on his novel. His shorthand business was very absorbing; his writing had to be done at night and on Sundays. He was making money and saving much of it, for he intended before long to give up business and devote himself entirely to literature. His plans however, must be postponed, for he realized that sending the girls to Smith would be far more expensive than sending them to Reserve.
Smith would be far more expensive than sending them to Reserve
room and board at off-campus housing - $300/year p. 41
Endowed scholarships of $100 and $50 p. 42, 43
tuition - $75/year
matriculation fee - $5
laboratory fees - $3-$5 per class
room and board at Guilford House - $250-$400/year
Estimate of $405 plus travel and incidentals, or $500/year, v. $85/year with one lab class, or more than five times
as much
1897, summer Helen on preparation for college, CWC 79
The summer holiday of 1897 was spent at Linwood Park, Vermilion, Ohio, on Lake Erie, about thirty miles west of Cleveland. Susan had chosen the month of July for the vacation because she wanted to get the girls ready for college in August. There the children spent hours everyday in the lake or on the beach. Ned loved to swim, but the girls found it difficult. They all learned to row in the Vermilion River. They enjoyed the fun and excitement of bonfires on the beach at night with the other young people of the resort, while some adult told thrilling stories to the group.
Charles, usually accompanied by a guest or two came up for the week-ends. Susan had taken the hired girl with her, for she wanted to be thoroughly rested before August when she must start to work on the girls’ wardrobes for college.
Freshman Ellen Hedican Duggan at 95 West Street, p 53
Freshman Florence Mary Homer at 95 West Street, p. 55
Freshman Edith Laurana Hurlburt at 95 West Street, p. 55
Freshman Mary Fosdick Jennings at 95 West Street, p. 55
Freshman Grace Theresa Osborne at 95 West Street, p. 57
Freshman Madelaine Guild Rogers at 95 West Street, p. 57
Freshman Sarah Barbour Webster at 95 West Street, p. 59
Sophomore Charlotte Eggleston at 95 West Street, p. 61
Sophomore Edna Louise Palmer at 95 West Street, p. 63
Sophomore Frances Mary White at 95 West Street, p. 65
On 1897 freshman student roll, living in campus housing at 95 West Street (Stone House) with 11 other students, p. 52 in class of 346 p. 76
FRESHMAN YEAR
1897-1898
10 Campus houses in 1897 catalog:
Dewey
Dickinson
Hatfield
Hubbard
Lawrence
Morris
Stoddard
Tenney
Wallace
Washburn
Senior Myra Budlong Booth at 10 Green Street, p. 61
Sophomore Edna Hague Fawcett at 10 Green Street, p. 74
Sophomore Marguerite Gifford at 10 Green Street, p. 74
Sophomore Phebe Daisy Hastings at 10 Green Street, p. 74
Sophomore Sarah Cleonice Stone at 10 Green Street, p. 78
Freshman Adah Blackwell at 10 Green, p. 79
Freshman Lena Mae Bowen at 10 Green Street, p. 80
Freshman Laura Alice Brown at 10 Green Street, p. 80
Freshman Annie Amelia Cass at 10 Green Sreeet, p. 80
Freshman Helen Mary Darrin at 10 Green Street, p. 81
On 1898 sophomore student roll, living in campus housing at 10 Green Street with 17 other students, p. 72, 73 in class of 305, p. 89
Freshman Julia Harris Edson at 10 Green Street, p. 81
Freshman Harriet Sara Emmons at 10 Green Street, p. 81
Freshman Agnes Farrell at 10 Green Street, p. 81
Freshman Grace Evelyn Merrill at 10 Green Street, p. 84
Freshman Hulda Elizabeth Pettingill at 10 Green Street, p. 84
Freshman Alice Colbath Pickering at 10 Green Street, p. 84
Freshman Virginia Bell Tolar at 10 Green Street, p. 86
Junior Otelia Cromwell at 190 Round Hill in 1898-1899 with one other student,
p. 66 in class of 230, p. 71
Sophomore Inez Louise Wiggin at 190 Round Hill, p. 78 (from Warsaw, N.Y.)
SOPHOMORE YEAR
1898-1899
On 1899-1900 junior student roll, living in campus housing at 36 Green Street with no other students, p. 16 in class of 273,
p. 40
Senior Otelia Cromwell at 275 Main Street in 1899-1900 with no other students, p. 10
in class of 225, p. 15
Note that 1899-1900 is the only year that neither the Chesnutts nor Otelia Cromwell lived with other Smith students.
Otelia Cromwell’s class size dropped from 230 in junior year to 225 in senior year.
JUNIOR YEAR
1899-1900
On 1900-1901 senior student roll, living in campus housing at 30 Green Street with 12 other students, p. 93 in class of 258, p. 100
Freshman Harriet Ryder Blumenthal at 30 Green Street, p. 71
Freshman Ellen Augusta Brackett at 30 Green Street, p. 71
Freshman Grace Elizabeth Haworth at 30 Green Street, p. 74
Freshman Lulu Broadbent Joslin at 30 Green Street, p. 75
Sophomore Theresa Rose Dervin at 30 Green Street, p. 81
Sophomore Laura Adelaide Mathews at 30 Green Street, p. 83
Sophomore Emily Packard at 30 Green Street, p. 84
Sophomore Estella Albra Wood at 30 Green Street, p. 86
Junior Catharine Elizabeth Brannick at 30 Green Street, p. 87
Junior Edith Lillian Claflin at 30 Green Street, p. 87
Junior Alice Dorothy Crulkshank at 30 Green Street, p. 87
Senior Edna Elizabeth Hammond at 30 Green Street, p. 94
The Chesnutts’ class size dropped from 346 in freshman year to 305 in sophomore year to 273 in junior year to 258 in senior year.
SENIOR YEAR
1900-1901
779
Vol 1915-16/1919-20: Smith College Catalogue
1915
Smith College
texts
Topic: Smith College Curriculum
753
Vol 1910-11/1914-15: Smith College Annual Circulars
1910
Smith College
texts
Topic: Smith College Curriculum
701
Vol 1905-06/1909-10: Smith College Annual Circulars
1905
Smith College
texts
Topic: Smith College Curriculum
489
Vol 1900-01/1904-05: Smith College Annual Circulars
1900
Smith College
texts
Topic: Smith College Curriculum
527
Vol 1890-91/1899-1900: Smith College Annual Circulars
1890
Smith College
texts
Topic: Smith College Curriculum
338
Vol 1872-1889/1890: Smith College Annual Circulars
1872
Smith College
texts
Topic: Smith College Curriculum
About 40 typical letters between parents and college students
Wanting children to do well in school
--Glad you are having a nice time, making friends and getting an education
--Glad to know that you and Ethel are enjoying yourselves, but I trust you will not forget
the serious side of it all
--My primary object in sending you up there, at some personal sacrifice on my part and
your mother’s I will assure you, was that you might seek the higher culture, both of
mind and heart
--Am pleased to know you are invited to join the Cleveland Club, and hope you will
enjoy it. You should, of course, join the athletic department, and learn how to play
shinny and baseball and prize fighting and fencing etc…..You
might also incidentally learn the meaning of the double-jointed Greek terms
on the map of the grounds indicating the orders of plants that grow there
--By the way, I believe you have said something about the library--it is a lovely one--and
Ethel in her last told us about the absence of honors and marks
--I gather from your letters that you are having a good time, which I am glad to learn. I
hope that by your diligence and good sense it may be but a prelude to a happy and
successful life. I am growing older every day, and have not yet realized my own
ambitions, so that a happy and successful future may depend largely upon
yourselves; hence the importance of making the best of your present opportunities
Money
--Keep me posted as to bills, etc. and I will remit accordingly
--Send me a memorandum of the amount necessary to clean off the slate and bring you
home for Christmas. I haven’t begun to draw any considerable revenue
from my writings yet, so do not touch me any harder than necessary
--I infer from looking at the calendar that you will soon be needing some money. Your
mother has ordered me to send seven dollars extra for hats. I enclose N.Y. draft
which I trust may cover the ground
--I think you labor under a misapprehension as to all the Cleveland girls there being the
daughters of rich parents; some of them I know are the daughters of
professional and business men who work as hard for what their daughters spend as
I do. Most of them, though are older men and are perhaps a bit farther ahead
--I make these suggestions because the letters I get seem to put the stress on these
external matters
Write home
-- Sometime or other, when you are thoroughly settled and all your wants are supplied
for an hour or two, you might drop me a word about what you are studying, and
what lectures you attend, and so on
What’s going on at home
--Your mother sends love and says that if you don’t need the new curtains send them
home for the side room upstairs
--I will keep you posted as to my literary movements….P.S. An elevator boy asked me
the other day if it was true that I was going into the “author business.” I told him
“Yes.”
--We have been having Home Week celebration; I send you a newspaper. Your mother
and I were down Tuesday evening to the theater, and took Dorothy down
Wednesday evening, Carnival night. Lots of light and noise and people; nothing particularly elevating, but quite exhilarating
--We had two-steps, waltzes, redowas, plain quadrilles, Dan Tucker and we finished up
with a cake-walk
--Have been reporting the Student Volunteer Movement Convention this week. It just
this minute occurred to me that I might have looked in on the New England
delegation and have seen if there was a delegate from Smith; but I didn’t think of it
in time
--I received your letters the other day and thank you for your congratulations. I am
writing this letter at home 1 p.m. Have been writing on Douglass Biog. all the
morning; it is going along swimmingly. Will read to a club at Willoughby next Friday
and at Emmanuel next Monday evening, Men’s Club. Am going to give a reading
at Washington later
Boyfriends and girlfriends
--Will and the other young man called last evening. I was not at home, but Dorothy and
Mama entertained them
--Ed Williams went away Sunday, I believe
--Glad to know you had such a gay time while Williams was there
What’s going on in school
(Several example letters covered in presentation)
Student careers
(Several example letters covered in presentation)
1897, September 24 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 81
I got home Thursday night. Had a nice time in Boston. One of my stories will come out in the December or January number of the Atlantic, so the editor assures me. I saw the Shaw Memorial and the new Public Library building, which are “out of sight.”
I have read your letters to your mother. She is coming down-town today to get the stuff for the curtains. I think you had best buy a desk and sell it when you come away-unless you can buy one that some one else wants to sell. Let me know when your money runs out, for of course, I want to get you properly started off. I hope you are nicely settled and got properly registered and started on your work.
I was in time for the little dance Thursday night. It was rather tame; there was something missing; and I haven’t got accustomed to the house yet, it is so quiet and tidy.
Write me all the interesting things, and take care of yourselves, and be economical.
1897, September 30 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 81
I presume you received my letter containing $15.00 for desk, etc., and noted what I said about it. I am quite willing to see you properly started off, and have you keep up with the fair average standard of the place. Of course, you cannot compete in expenditures with the daughters of the rich, of whom I suppose at least a few are there. The expense account you send me is not bad; I shall expect you to keep up the custom.
… I send you herewith P.O. order for $15.00 to get the gymnasium suits; you might as well get them early. If you will find out the cost of sittings in the Episcopal church, I will send the money along to hold up the church’s “protecting and sheltering arms.” I might have attended to these things when I was there, but it is just as well for you to learn to transact your own business.
These letters are to you and Helen jointly; be good girls, be economical; remember that you are there not only to have fun but to study and prepare yourselves for your future usefulness. My regards to Miss King and her mother. Your mother, Dottie and Ned send love. I do not need to say let me hear from you often .
1898, November 24 Ethel Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 105
We received the check and thank you very much for it. Dear Miss Jordan is as lovely as ever. In class the other day she was talking about suffrage and the scandalous proceedings in North and South Carolina and different places South and West, and she felt very, very strongly on the subject and said this country couldn’t talk very much of justice and freedom and the “noble privilege of suffrage” (she did say that with such sarcasm) while such a shameful injustice went on. And she went on to say that in the South Negroes were not only refused suffrage, but were kept form trades and getting into employment by Trade Unions and such things; and in Georgia now the people are clamoring for the reduction of the amount allowed for educational purposes to the Negroes; and then they blame the Negroes when they do not always succeed in getting along well and advancing toward the higher paths of life. She said a great many very true things; I think she is an admirable woman. She read one of my themes out in class the other day as a very good theme. I love college more and more each day, and Miss Jordan also.
(October 1898-April 1899 racial violence, including in Wilmington, N.C., that spurred The Marrow of Tradition)
(Mary Augusta Jordan, A.M., professor of rhetoric and old English)
1899, spring _Susan Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 106
I have other paper in the house, but it is upstairs, and I am too lame to go up and down very often, so I think you will not mind my writing on this. I was out yesterday for the first time in two weeks. Edwin’s shoes had given out and I had to go downtown with him to get another pair, as his father is too busy now to think of things of that kind. His assistant, Mrs. Jones is in very uncertain health and can’t be depended on just now, so it keeps your father anxious and overworked. I am glad that he gets so much encouragement in his literary work as that keeps his spirits up, and helps him to slave along without thinking too much about it. I am only sorry that he did not get this encouragement ten years ago.
1899, spring _Helen on girls’ response to Charles being overworked and his response to them, CWC 107
This letter set the girls to worrying about their father. The fact that his expenses were so heavy that they kept him slaving along, as Susan expressed it, convinced them that they had been unfair to him in coming to Smith. So they wrote offering to leave at the end of the year and continue their education at Western Reserve University. Charles answered them at once telling them that it was very dutiful and considerate of them to make such a proposal, but that he was quite able to keep them at Smith and was in no sense overweighted by the burden.
1899, Helen on Easter vacation and family’s reaction to Charles’s success, CWC 110
After the publication of The Conjure Woman the Chesnutts were so happy that they had to celebrate in some way. Charles persuaded Susan and her three daughters to spend the Easter vacation in Washington with the Tysons (Susan’s sister Jane Tyson and her husband), who have been urging them to come. The girls wrote glowing letters home to him telling him about all the wonderful experiences they were having sightseeing and meeting interesting people. They thought Washington the most wonderful and beautiful city imaginable, a fit capital for their glorious country. Charles was delighted with their transports and hope that disillusionment would not come too soon. Then they returned to Northampton and spent a delightful spring term reading the notices about the book that their father sent them, and pouring over the magazines in the Forbes Library which contained articles about him.
1899, May 26 Ethel Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 111
We received your nice letter and the newspaper with the article about you in it. Thank you very much; it was a very interesting account of your life and gave your own daughters new information about you and their grandmother. Cleveland is acting nicely, as it ought to, by you. We are very glad about the story the Century has accepted. The Conjure Woman is in the Forbes Library here; I do not know who asked for it. We thought we would, then decided it would be nicer if someone else did, because we were sure someone else would. Our own copy is being eagerly read; everyone admires the book greatly.
1899, June 1 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 111
...If you have the Bookman in the library there, you will find in it this month about five columns devoted to me and The Conjure Woman with a portrait--two and more columns of personal notice and as much more of review. Look also in the Book Buyer for a good portrait of yours truly. Will have lots of pleasant things to tell you when you return. Let me know when you need funds, and how much.
1899, October 12 Susan Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 119
…Your father is fairly started in his literary work. He has finished the Douglass biography, and is now busy reading the proof-sheets for his new book. So far he has had very little time to get lonesome, I am hoping he will keep busy. I have given up the parlor to him; he has his desk and table and typewriter in there. By taking some of the chairs out he has plenty of room. I use the sitting-room for my friends. We have a telephone in the house. It was put in yesterday--in the dining-room….
1899, November 12 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 122 - part 1 of 2
I am going to Washington some time this week to give a reading there Friday night, and I may not be back until the last of next week, I send you herewith N. Y. draft for, I believe, the usual amount. Glad to know you had a pleasant time Hallowe’en. The characters, Simple Simon and Mother Goose, taken by you and Helen seem quite appropriate, and we are not surprised that you took the prize. Save the pictures.
1899, December 10 Helen Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 125
We received your books this week and they are fine. Henrietta Brown sat down and read The Wife of His Youth steadily until she finished it. She says that it is the first book that has caused her to give up everything else for many a day. I don’t care much for the binding, but I suppose the publishers know what they are doing. The illustrations are good, very good except the first one. I never cared for that. I think it will be a grand success, and so do the other girls who have read it.
The Douglass book is very sweet indeed; your style is perfect. The preface is very nice. We take literature this year and are capable of judging.
What are you doing now? Are you still working on Rena? We shall be home in ten days. There are to be no cut rates. You will receive a letter in a day or two on finances. Love to all.
(Senior Henrietta Thompson Brown from Buffalo, N.Y., living at 30 Green Street. This is the year the Chesnutts lived with no other students)
1900, January 26 Susan Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 139
...We went to hear Paderewski last night. We had to pay a good price for seats, but it was worth the price. He played at the Gray’s Armory; all reserved seats were two dollars, general admission was one dollar, and that immense place was simply packed. It was a fearful night, “it snowed and blowed”, and was very cold, but that did not keep people away. Every note was as distinct and clear as a bell. He played over two hours, leaving the stage only once for a few minutes. It was fine playing, and it was a fine and appreciative audience that greeted him.
I have been out every evening this week except one. So I manage to lead quite a busy life. I daresay Papa told you about the reception which was tendered us at Dr. Jewette’s on Cedar Avenue. Love to you both.
1900, February 4 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 140
It was my firm intention to visit you on this trip East, but you want me to make the best impression when I come, and I left home about ten days sooner than expected, so that I didn’t have time to get some “glad rags” that I intended to wear to impress my “distinguished personality” upon your under-graduate friends and to do you proper credit. Besides I have promised to send in the MS. of a certain novel in the shortest time possible, and in order to get it in on time, I must hustle it--and I wouldn’t want to come to you unless I could stay at least a day.
Must hurry home for another reason--to send that tuition money. Will leave here for Cleveland in just one hour and will be there 9:30 tomorrow a.m. I want to visit you when I can take my time and enjoy it. I will let you know.
1900 March Helen on Dorothy coming to visit her and Ethel at Smith, CWC 144
Chesnutt had arranged to return East early in March to give some readings and lectures in
Boston and vicinity. When the girls at Smith learned of their father’s plans they asked him to bring
Dorothy and leave her with them for a little visit. Susan at first refused to allow her to go--she thought
it utter nonsense for Charles to burden himself with the care of a little girl when he was going to be
so busy in his own affairs, but Dorothy and Charles finally overcame her objections.
1900, March 15 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 145
I am thinking of coming up to Northampton Saturday morning and staying over Sunday,
as I have some engagements here the first of next week. I suppose you are well, although your
silence is equally compatible with death or disability.
I wired your mother to express me a certain pair of shoes to Northampton. Keep them
for me--they are not for your wear--I want something for myself.
I hope the infant is enjoying herself. I may not be able to go home before the 28th and
I expect the matter will become dolorosa before she sees her pickaninny again. Much love to
my three girls.
Dorothy Chesnutt in 1897, c age 7
1900, October 12 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 153
Your interesting letters have been received from time to time. Am sincerely glad to know that you find the house life so pleasant and that the young ladies are all so harmonious and agreeable. Have read with much interest the clipping sent, giving account of the 25th anniversary exercises, which were very interesting. Am pleased to know that you saw Mr. Chamberlin and Angel; she is a queer girl, but I imagine has quality; at least Chamberlain thinks so, and as I value his opinion concerning myself, which should I question it concerning his protégée? Hein?
We were invited to call on my friends, the Amblers several evenings ago, to meet a Mr. Caverno and wife, who were visiting there. One of their daughters is an instructor in Greek at Smith--I guess I have heard you speak of her (Julia)--and another teaches in the Burnham School. They expressed their intention of looking you up or of hoping to see you at Northampton, whither they are bound by slow stages. I hope you may meet them, as they are very nice people. Mr. Caverno writes, along philosophic and similar lines, for the serious magazines, and is, I imagine, a retired minister.
We were pleased to learn from a recent letter, that Ethel and her young man had composed their differences; it is well enough not to have any. He has been around several times lately.
.... Have also finished reading the proofs of The House Behind the Cedars, which has been improved by the process. I see it advertised as containing “a bold plot, developed with much force, and elaborating a sociological problem of great significance.”
1900, November 6 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Helen Chesnutt, CWC 154 - part 1 of 2
Your interesting letter came duly in hand; I also saw the one written to your mother, giving an account of certain “high jinks” on which I forbear to speak, with a silence more eloquent than words. (This was senior year, the year after Otelia was gone, and the year after they and she lived with no other students.)
The reviews of the new book are coming in and are very favorable. I mailed you a copy of the Plain Dealer yesterday, with the first review I had seen, although I have received several since, all favorable. Mr. Chamberlin has an excellent one in last Wednesday’s Transcript. The P.D. says I have written a “story of absorbing interest and treated a perplexing problem with masterly ability.” If this keeps up, the book will be a genuine success, and my next book a howling success. Several big houses have been after it already. This book ought to make an impression, and I have no sort of doubt it will.
I do not, however, expect to get rich out of it, and I therefore, have not sent a great deal extra in the check I enclose herewith. I’m afraid your are “spread”-ing too much. I guess you can worry along with this awhile….
1901 Helen on Tuskegee, CWC 159
From Wilmington he went to Tuskegee as the guest of Dr. and Mrs. Booker T. Washington. Chesnutt was very much impressed with Tuskegee and with the people whom Washington had gathered about him. The annual Tuskegee Conference, which was held in February of each year for the benefit of the Negro farmers of the district, was in session, and he realized for the first time what really great work Washington was doing for the Negroes of the Black belt. This conference was among Booker T. Washington’s most important projects at Tuskegee. Then and in years to come Chesnutt criticised Washington’s philosophy very strongly, but he never underestimated the greatness of the work he was doing for the Negroes in the South.
1901 Helen on her and Ethel’s plans for after graduation, CWC 163
His two daughters at Smith now were in their senior year and had developed a great deal of initiative and independence. They were looking out for their own future and had written to both Tuskegee and Washington, D.C., about teaching positions for the following year. Ethel was engaged to be married to Edward C. Williams, Librarian of Western Reserve University, and the wedding was to take place after her graduation from Smith. Charles’s dearest hope was to have Helen teach in one of the Cleveland high schools, Central High if possible. He was therefore very much surprised when he found both girls wanted to leave Cleveland and teach in the South. He promptly went down to the Board of Education to see what chance Helen would have to teach in high schools, and sent the following letter to her:
1901, January 29 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Helen Chesnutt, CWC 163
Your interesting, vivacious and business-like note came duly to hand, and it gives me much pleasure to note the energy and foresight with which you are looking out for the future. I trust you and Ethel have passed your examination with satisfaction to yourselves and your teachers.
I have paid a visit to Superintendent Jones, apropos of your future employment. The case seems to stand about like this:
You can get into the grammar schools in Cleveland by going through the Normal School for two terms of thirty weeks, after which you will probably be able to substitute the remainder of the year. If you then wish to teach in the grammar schools, you can start on a salary of $475.00 a year, being $50.00 more than the mere high and normal graduate gets; in other words, your college education will enable you to start at $50.00 per year more.
For the High School, the rule is, four or five years experience before one can get in the high schools. If one does not care to go through Normal, this experience is best acquired in high schools in small towns, which counts in qualifying for high school positions here. I am told that the best time to apply for such positions is in March or April. If they were applied for now, the application might be forgotten or mislaid. These high schools are glad to get college graduates; they pay $40.00 or $50.00 a month.
Of course, all these rules are more or less subject to modification in case of great ability or demonstrated success. But success can be demonstrated only through experience somewhere.
I mean to visit Tuskegee in a couple of weeks; shall leave here sometime next week. I shall also visit Washington, and will look around in your behalf. I am afraid we can’t get you definitely disposed of for a month or so yet, but you have so many lines out that we may be able to land something.
As to Ethel’s case, I don’t quite understand its status; but the same principles apply, if she should wish to teach.
1901 Susan Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 164
We had a surprise this morning, Helen walked in at breakfast time. Says the doctor advised her to come home and take absolute rest for at least three weeks on account of her eyes. That means a lengthy bill at Dr. Baker’s. I am afraid she had strained her eyes severely studying astronomy which she ought never to have taken up. I fear they are in a bad way now, but we have decided to say that she is run down and has been advised to stop for a while. She will find it hard work to get a position if it is known that she is having so much trouble with her eyes.
1901 Helen on Charles’s wish for her to teach in Cleveland, CWC 164
After three weeks’ rest Helen returned to college, and a few days later received a letter from her father telling her that he wanted her to teach in Cleveland; that he would be very much disappointed if she did not give up her idea of going to Washington. He wanted her to attend the Cleveland Normal School and ultimately to teach at Central High School. Mr. Harris had promised to give her substitute work and to help her get into Central at the earliest opportunity.
1901, March 17 Helen Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 164
I don’t understand your attitude in this school-teaching business at all. We have counted on freeing you from the burdens of our support as soon as we left college, so this idea on your part comes as a shock. You and Mama are always talking about the need of saving money and economizing; therefore I do not see the sense of your undertaking to support me for another year. The actual outlay for my board etc. would be very little, but by being in Washington I might be earning $600 or $700.…
As for your position in Cleveland, it has never had the slightest influence on my situation, and has never been of any advantage to me.
I am not comfortable in Cleveland and never was, and I have always vowed that I would not settle down in that city….And now you ask me to return and go to the Normal School! I can’t imagine anything more distasteful. I tell you all this because I want you to know exactly where I stand in this matter.
But since you do not wish me to go South and become independent, and since your heart is set on my going to Normal School, I will return to Cleveland and go to Normal School. But it will be on your own head if I don’t get all these golden positions that are standing around waiting for me, according to Professor Harris. As for his advice about the South-he is a snob and always has been, and I don’t care a snap about him and his advice.
Will you please write to Uncle Clay and tell him that you have arranged that I am to stay in Cleveland next year, and thank him for the trouble he has taken about the position in Washington. I think that you ought to explain to him that I am not backing out. I suppose everyone will call me shiftless and worthless because after “this expensive education,” as they say, I come back home and tag out to Normal.
Ethel will write to you herself. She, of course, would not dream of going to Normal School, and teaching in Cleveland; so as you say “it seems to be up to me” to do it. Well, I have stood a lot more than people give me credit for, and a few more blows won’t materially affect my ultimate good. You will of course write to Uncle Clay.
I suppose that I shall be happier about this when I get settled at Normal, but now it seems very dreary. Much love to you.
1901 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Helen Chesnutt, CWC 165
Your letter came this morning. I am sorry my letter should have given you a shock. I trust it has not affected you seriously.
Perhaps in my thoughts about the matter, I did not place stress enough upon the question of your situation in Cleveland, which you have stated tersely, vigorously, and I must admit, correctly, so far as I can see. I do not see, either, that time will materially modify the situation.
True, here you would have steady employment, and I might, if proper pressure were brought to bear upon me, find a more commodious house to live in. But I do not see how you could avoid the Normal School. If you have always meant never to settle down here, it would of course be wasting time to go through so distasteful a mill. My heart is not at all set on the matter. I am quite willing you should be independent; I have no objection to your living where you can see some young people, and possibly meet some young man whom you would like well enough to marry.
I rather expected that you would have written to Washington by this time and filed your application. Go on and do so if you prefer, as I imagine you do. I do not pin any faith to Mr. Harris, in view of what Mr. Jones said, and there is no doubt about your having to enter the graded school before you can get into the High School, and if you should change your mind about Cleveland, your Washington experience would count. If you should not like it at Washington, a year will roll by quickly enough, and you will have money in your purse. You won’t be part of the people in Washington, but you will be part of a people, which is more than you would be here.
So you had better file your application, and file it right away, as there may be others ahead. If you don’t get your appointment you still have Cleveland to fall back upon. We shall see you several times a year, and in summer anyway.
As to Ethel the affair is not so urgent, and I will write her, or wait until she writes me. I don’t say she can’t go to Tuskegee--but we will write about it.
Your Mother agrees with me that we are solely animated by a desire for your happiness, and that in this respect your feelings are a very important matter to
be considered, if not the controlling matter. We are quite willing that you should do as you like. All are well and send love.
1901 Ethel Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 166
Helen is in a frightful state; she has had headaches nearly every day lately, and today she is in despair. If you want your Helen a total nervous wreck, just keep on in the way you are going. She is too proud, too ambitious, to act sensibly. She cannot keep on with the work; every time she does anything of any consequence she collapses with one of the headaches. It is criminal for her to try it; Baker ought never to have let her come back, with her eyes in the condition they are. She has got to stop and that immediately. She has got to rest, for a year or more. And Normal School, Washington, study or teaching of any kind are out of the question. She is so young that there is no need of her rushing any more, and a total cessation of all eye work is absolutely necessary. I don’t think she had much rest at home. The girl is on the verge of nervous prostration and no one seems to realize it. At home you are all under a fearful nervous strain all the time; you do too many unnecessary things and you talk and discuss too much, and Helen has got to rest somewhere. She has got to stop, and future questions can be settled at future times; if she comes home she must not be troubled with questions as to what she shall do in the future. She is not fit to do anything now. If the house at home is to be filled with company all summer, it is no place for Helen. I know you told her she ought to stay out and come back next year but she hadn’t wisdom enough to do it. Please try to realize these things. She cannot keep on at college present. Helen Chesnutt needs complete rest of mind and eyes for a long time and I propose to step in now, and see that she gets it. Pride and ambition are all right within certain limits but I don’t want them to kill or ruin Helen. I should imagine from all I hear of you that you had better call a halt on yourself too, or you will collapse. No matter how much will, ambition, pride you have, you can’t strain Nature very long; something will smash somewhere and you are living too strenuously. We all need a little more practical sense about us, and less emotion and feeling. I hope you are recovering from your Southern trip. Much love to you.
1901, March 25 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 167
Your very positive and commanding letter of several days since sent cold chills up and down my spine, and paralyzed me so that I have only just recovered. I am deeply concerned to hear of Helen’s terrible plight, but hope it may prove to be not quite so bad as it seemed to you at last writing. I understand your mother has written you. I called on Dr. Baker on Saturday, the day after receiving your letter, and after waiting two hours had a talk with him. He has an idea that by taking it easy and not worrying Helen ought to be able, so far as he can see, to pull through the school year. Possibly by the time she comes back from Boston, where she ought to try to be moderately quiet and take care of herself, she may feel in better shape. If not it will be time enough then to take up the question of her immediate future. All dangers are not death. I think I have heard you speak of a girl who is almost blind who has taken her course right along. This momentary affliction of Helen’s might give you an opportunity for a little self-sacrifice in the way of helping her; it might work for your own soul’s good.
I quite agree with you that we all lead too strenuous a life, and that we ought to let up a little. It is not at all necessary for either of you to worry yourselves to death about what you shall do next year, which I suspect is the source of most of Helen’s troubles. If she chooses to file that Washington application she would not be bound by it--she could resign in advance, if necessary; there will be plenty of others ready to take her place. Or if her health requires it, she can stay out as long as necessary. I imagine I can support her a while without eleemosynary aid. What she would have to expect in either place you both know; but we have lived quite a while, and with a little philosophy and a little less strenuousness we can worry along almost anywhere.
With regard to your going to Tuskegee you had better write your views. I see the South with the chastened eye of experience; it may look very different through the rosy spectacles of youth, to one who has never seen it. You are young too and have, I trust, a long life before you, of which a year or two, here or there, under conditions at all tolerable, would not be missed. I should like to see you happily married, had indeed rather expected it, but that is a thing which I cannot control. It is natural, perhaps, that you would like a little liberty before being tied down.
Write to me again, some more strong, vigorous letters, and we will work all these things out. You have a couple of weeks’ vacation, which ought to have a good effect if employed judiciously. All are well.
1901 Helen on Easter 1901 in Boston with college mates and other friends, CWC 168-169
Helen returned home after the Easter vacation which the girls had spent in Boston and vicinity visiting their college mates and other friends. She had been granted permission to be graduated with her class but would have to return in March of the following year to compete her work and receive her degree.
1901, June Helen on Smith graduation, CWC 171
In June, Susan, Charles, and Dorothy went to Northampton to see the girls graduated. They returned in time for Edwin’s graduation from Central High School….
--Smith College Archives
--Smith College Archives
--Smith College Library
Ethel and Helen’s accomplishments after Smith
From Charles Chesnutt bio in
1919 National Cyclopedia of the Colored Race, Vol. 1, P. 347
...Two of his daughters are graduates of Smith College and another graduated from the College for Women of Western Reserve University.
One of his daughters, Mrs. Ethel C. Williams, is the wife of Professor Edward C. Williams, of Howard University; another, Miss Helen Chestnut, is a teacher in Central High School, Cleveland, and the third, Miss Dorothy Chestnut, is a teacher in the Cleveland Public schools....
...His only son is a graduate of Harvard University, studied dentistry in Northwestern University, Chicago and is practicing his profession in Chicago...
Memorial Day address at Harvard in 1905 by Roscoe Conkling Bruce
...In camps and fields many a New England soldier with the blue-Black spelling book on his knees, had clumsily taught Black soldiers and contrabands the first hand lessons in the great mystery of letters. Hard on the heels of the soldiers, when the air was not yet purged of the horrid smell of powder and blood, the schoolma’m ventured. She came to liberate; but, she came with benediction and grace, her power was over the heart and conscience of the people. It was the teacher’s service to grant the slave that moral freedom which emancipation of the body made possible; that is the teacher’s service at this hour. The free lay of each individual’s best powers can be secured only through education….
--http://www.Blackpast.org/1905-roscoe-conkling-bruce-freedom-through-education#sthash.47mtdzZ1.cYQWJm7T.dpuf
Roscoe Conkling Bruce (1879-1950), only son of U..S. Senator Blanche K. Bruce and his wife Josephine. He attended Phillips Exeter and graduated from Harvard Phi Beta Kappa in 1902. He supervised Tuskegee Institute’s Academic Department, was principal of Armstrong Manual Training High School, and was Assistant Superintendent in charge of the Colored Schools of the District of Columbia, a position he held until 1924.
1879: In April, Ethel P. Chesnutt is born to Charles W. Chesnutt and Susan
(Perry) Chesnutt.
1893: Ethel enters Central High School.
1897: In June, she graduates from Central High School. In the fall, Ethel
begins studies at Smith College in Northampton, MA.
1901: Ethel graduates from Smith College in June and becomes an
instructor at Tuskegee Institute.
1902: In November, she quits Tuskegee and returns to Cleveland, where she
marries Edward Christopher Williams, known as an author and the
first African-American professional librarian, serving at Western
Reserve and Howard universities.
1932: Expresses displeasure with director Oscar Micheaux’s remake of her
father’s book The House Behind the Cedars into the movie Veiled
Aristocrats. (Smith 1979, 54)
Ethel Perry Chesnutt Williams (1879-1958) and husband Edward Christopher Williams, known as an author and the first African-American professional librarian, married in 1902. Williams was valedictorian of his class at Adelbert College (Western Reserve University),
a member of Phi Beta Kappa, librarian of Hatch Library at Western Reserve, principal of
M Street High School in Washington, D. C., and librarian of Howard University.
Edward C. Williams, Class of 1892. One of the most accomplished scholars to matriculate at Case Western Reserve University, Edward Christopher Williams was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1871. He graduated from Adelbert College in 1892 as valedictorian of his class and member of the Phi Beta Kappa national honor society. He was one of the society's six African American members. As a student, he also held the Ohio Conference Championship for mile runner.
--African American Scholars at Case
Upon graduation, Mr. Williams accepted the first Assistant Librarian position at Western Reserve University's Hatch Library. Two years later (1898), he not only assumed the directorship of the Library, but also took sabbatical in order to attend the New York State Library School in Albany. After completing the two-year Master's Degree program in only one year, Mr. Williams returned to the University. He initially prepared the organizational plan of the Library School and, when the School was established in 1904, taught courses in Reference Work, Bibliography, Public Documents, and Book Selection. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Mr. Williams was a founding member of the Ohio Library Association (OLA) and lectured at the Ohio Institute of Library workers, which
held its annual meetings each year at OLA.
In 1909, for reasons not clearly documented, Mr. Williams left his position at Western Reserve University and became principal of a high school in Washington, D.C. Not content as a school administrator, in 1916 Mr. Williams became Librarian at Howard University in Washington, D.C. There, he established the Library School and also taught German, Italian, and French in the Department of Romance Languages. In 1924, Mr. Williams became head of the Department. Versatile and multi-talented, Mr. Williams was also a classical drama playwriter and received a Julius Rosenwald fellowhip in 1929 to study for a Ph.D at Columbia University. He died on December 24, 1929 while working on his degree.
1903: In October, birth of her son, Charles Waddell Chesnutt Williams, who
later became a lawyer and died before completing a biography of
his father. (Where is the uncompleted biography of Edward
1906: Represented Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical School at the 25th
anniversary celebration of Tuskegee Institute.
1929: December 24, husband dies at Freedmen’s hospital in Washington,
D.C., while on faculty at Howard University and working on Ph.D.
at Columbia University.
1932: Received telegram(s) regarding her father’s death.
1939: By now married to Joseph Beaman and still living in Washington, D.C.
1952: Book Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line is
in part dedicated to Ethel, p. vi
“Last but by no means least, I owe warmest thanks to my two sisters, Ethel and Dorothy, for their encouragement and co-operation….”
--Helen M. Chesnutt, Feb. 14, 1952, in Charles
Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line, p. vi
1958: Ethel dies
1881: In December, Helen M. Chesnutt is born to Charles W. Chesnutt and
Susan (Perry) Chesnutt.
1893: Helen enters Central High School.
1897: In June, Helen graduates from Central High School and in fall enters
Smith College.
1901: Helen walks in graduation from Smith College in June and is in the
1901 yearbook.
1902: Helen goes to Baltimore to teach. Then she begins substituting in
Cleveland public schools. When she teaches Latin at Central High
School, one of her students is Langston Hughes. She returns to
Smith for final credits in March and officially graduates.
1904: Helen moves with her parents to a new house in Cleveland, located at
1668 (later renumbered 9719) Lamont Avenue. Charles lived there
until his death in 1932. Helen and her mother moved out in 1936.
The 14-room house into which the Charles Chesnutt family moved in 1904 at 1668 (later renumbered 9719) Lamont Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio. Charles lived there for 28 years until his death in 1932. The family moved out in 1936 and the house, situated on a lot 300 feet deep by 70 feet wide, was torn down when the Charles Orr School was built on the site. Charles W. Chesnutt School is on E. 71 & Kinsman.
With Charles and family through their major life occurrences:
1905 The Colonel’s Dream, Edwin graduates from Harvard, Charles
invited attendee at Mark Twain’s 70th birthday party at Delmonico’s in
New York City; 1906 Play Mrs. Darcy’s Daughter; 1909-1910 Charles co-founds the NAACP and becomes member of its general
committee, suffers minor stroke, declines to endorse Du Bois’s
public criticism of Booker T. Washington
1912: Helen tours Europe with her father.
1912 The Doll; 1913 Charles defeats Ohio bill prohibiting interracial
marriage and is awarded honorary LL.D. degree by Wilberforce
University
1921: In the summer, she begins to teach Latin at the Foreign Language
School at Western Reserve University.
1925: Helen receives M.A. at Columbia University.
1927: In November, she suffers a ruptured appendix followed by peritonitis.
Charles had suffered appendicitis in 1920, the year his father died, and a year before his last publishing attempt, Paul Marchand, F.M.C., is rejected; 1928 Charles wins Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
1952: Book Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line is published.
1969: Helen dies at age 88.
Helen Chesnutt in 1958 at the Cleveland Public Library, which holds a collection of Charles Chesnutt materials, in front of the Charles Chesnutt exhibit.
Because of Helen Chesnutt’s meticulous curatorial care and dissemination of her father’s papers, we know much about the life of late-nineteenth century/turn-of-the-twentieth century race writer Charles W. Chesnutt, including the lives of his two daughters who were the first known Black students at Smith College.
EXTRA SLIDES
1890, Dec. Daughter Dorothy born
1896 Travels to Paris and England
1897 Daughters Ethel and Helen graduate from Central High School,
reject Western Reserve University, and enter Smith College
1897-1898 The Wife of His Youth. Both Mandy Oxendine and A Business
Career rejected and later published posthumously
1899 The Conjure Woman, Frederick Douglass biography, and The
Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line. Begins
presenting public lectures. Closes stenographic business
1900 The House Behind the Cedars/Rena. Begins writing The Marrow
of Tradition
1901 Daughters Ethel and Helen graduate from Smith. Delivers
speech at memorial service for president William McKinley. The
Marrow of Tradition.Opens new stenographic office
1903 Evelyn’s Husband rejected and later published posthumously
1904 Family moves to new house at 1668 (later renumbered 9719)
Lamont Avenue
1905 The Colonel’s Dream. Son, Edwin, graduates from Harvard
College. Invited attendee at Mark Twain’s 70th birthday party at
Delmonico’s in New York City
1906 Play Mrs. Darcy’s Daughter produced
1909-1910 Co-founds the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People and becomes member of its general
committee. Suffers minor stroke. Declines to endorse Du Bois’s
public criticism of Booker T. Washington
1912 The Doll. Tours Europe with daughter Helen
1913 Leads successful fight to defeat Ohio bill prohibiting interracial
marriage. Awarded honorary LL.D. degree by Wilberforce
University. Daughter Dorothy graduates from Western Reserve
University and goes on to become juvenile court probation
officer then schoolteacher
1915 Crashes car, killing young female passenger and injuring his
wife, after buying car and learning to drive the previous year.
Son graduates from dental school at Northwestern University
and opens practice in Chicago
1917 Leads successful fight to ban The Birth of a Nation film in
Cleveland
1920 Suffers appendicitis. Father, Andrew Jackson Chesnutt, dies
1921 Paul Marchand, F.M.C. rejected and published posthumously
1906-1932 Wrote and published little, including a few short stories and
essays. Lots of travel.
1932, Nov. 15 Dies, buried in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio.
1909-1910 Co-founds the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People and becomes member of its general
committee. Suffers minor stroke. Declines to endorse Du Bois’s
public criticism of Booker T. Washington
1912 The Doll. Tours Europe with daughter Helen
1913 Leads successful fight to defeat Ohio bill prohibiting interracial
marriage. Awarded honorary LL.D. degree by Wilberforce
University. Daughter Dorothy graduates from Western Reserve
University and goes on to become juvenile court probation
officer then schoolteacher
1915 Crashes car, killing young female passenger and injuring his
wife, after buying car and learning to drive the previous year.
Son graduates from dental school at Northwestern University
and opens practice in Chicago
1917 Leads successful fight to ban The Birth of a Nation film in
Cleveland
1920 Suffers appendicitis. Father, Andrew Jackson Chesnutt, dies
1921 Paul Marchand, F.M.C. rejected and published posthumously
1928 Wins Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
1906-1932 Wrote and published little, including a few short stories and
essays. Lots of travel.
1932, Nov. 15 Dies, buried in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio.
1899, November 2 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Edward C. Williams, CWC 121
1899, December 5 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Edward C. Williams, CWC 124
1900, February 27 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Edward C. Williams, CWC 142
1900, March 4 Edward C. Williams to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 143
1900, April 28 Edward C. Williams to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 148
1900, May 12 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Edward C. Williams, CWC 148
1901, October 26 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, TBA 164
1901, October 29 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 175
1902 Helen on Ethel’s early career, CWC 183
1902 Helen on Ethel’s resignation from Tuskegee to marry Edward, CWC 184
1902 Helen on Charles’s thoughts about Booker T. Washington/ Tuskegee, CWC 191
1903, June 27 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, CWC 193
1903, August 11 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, CWC 194
1902 Helen on her early career, CWC 183
1902 Helen on her move from Baltimore to Cleveland, CWC 184
1902 Helen on Chesnutts’ new house and Cleveland life, CWC 184-190
Had it not been for the Negro school and college, the Negro would, to all intents and purposes, have been driven back to slavery. His economic foothold in land and capital was too slight in ten years of turmoil to effect any defense or stability.…But already, through establishing public schools and private colleges, and by organizing the Negro church, the Negro had acquired enough leadership and knowledge to thwart the worst designs of the new slave drivers.
Compiled by W. N. Hartshorn of Clifton, Massachusetts, in 1910, concerning the Clifton Conference, which took place from 1901 to 1908 to discuss educational and religious opportunities available to African Americans.
It celebrates the "religious, moral, and educational development of the American Negro since his emancipation."
--http://digital.ncdcr.gov/cdm/ref/colle
242 HBCUs by 1908
Alabama (36 institutions)
Arkansas (7 institutions)
Dist. of Columbia (2 institutions)
Florida (8 institutions)
Georgia (26 institutions)
Illinois (1 institution)
Kansas (1 institution)
Kentucky (11 institutions)
Louisiana (10 institutions)
Maryland (2 institutions)
Massachusetts (1 institution)
Mississippi (14 institutions)
Missouri (2 institutions)
New York (1 institution)
North Carolina (34 institutions)
Ohio (2 institutions)
Oklahoma (1 institution)
Pennsylvania (2 institutions)
South Carolina (28 institutions)
Tennessee (16 institutions)
Texas (11 institutions)
Virginia (23 institutions)
West Virginia (3 institutions)
The Normal School for Colored Girls opened in 1851, founded by Myrtilla Miner (1815-1864), while slavery was still legal in the District of Columbia
The only school in D.C. to provide education beyond the primary level to African-American students
Early financial support came from Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, the prominent Quaker, as well as his cousin, Uncle Tom’s Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Dr. Gamaliel Bailey, editor of the abolitionist newspaper The National Era.
Miner, a white woman, wrote to a friend in 1852, "I love this school of mine profoundly, and have really no idea, when I am with them, that [my students] are not white, recognizing their spiritual more than their physical. Some, indeed many, spirits with whom I come in contact here seem far darker than they."
--UDC Digital Archives Collection
Miner was unable to raise money for the school after 1960 due to frail health and died in 1864.
The school was inactive for lack of funds between 1860 and 1871.
Congress authorized a bill started in the U.S. Senate to incorporate the Institution for Colored Youth in Washington, D.C., Feb. 17, 1863. This institution incorporated in 1863.
In 1871, the Institution for the Education of Colored Youth began operating under the Miner name in connection with Howard University. This helped revive the training of African American teachers in Washington, D. C.
The cooperative venture with Howard ended in 1875.
From the 1870s through World War II, including Otelia Cromwell’s 1896-1898 years there, Miner Teacher's College educated the majority of African American elementary school teachers employed by the Washington, D.C., schools.
According to historian Constance Green, the school offered "a better education than that available to most white children."
--UDC Digital Archives Collection
http://digital.ncdcr.gov/cdm/ref/collection/p249901coll37/id/4158
TWENTY-SIX SOUTHERN INSTITUTIONS FOR THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO, OPERATED AND AIDED BY
THE AMERICAN BAPTIST HOME MISSION SOCIETY
INSTITl'TJ()" LOCATION PRESIDENT Fouuded Students,
l!lO8 Teachers Theological Approximate Students Annual
Value of
Property
R'q)cnses
• c1ma niver'it\' q,elma, Ua, R. T. Pollard •
Arkan. as Baptist olle<Tc LiUlc Rock, Ark. J. A. Rooker
Florida Baptist.\.eadelU." J acksol1\'ille, Fla. :-\.'. ColIier
Florida Institute Live Oak. Fla. L.. Jone
Walk I' Baptist Institute Augusta. Ga. C. T. '" alker
.-\t1anta Baptist Colleg .\.tlanta. Ga. John Hope
SpcIman 'eminary :\lIanta, Ga. Miss H. :E. Gile
Jeruel Academv Athens. (;a. J. H. Brown . Amerieu. In titute Amerieu . Ga. M. W. Reddick
tate lTniycrsit.v LOlli ,'ille. h'y. W. T. Amiger
Coll'lllan Academy Gib land. La, O. L. Coleman
Jaek 'on Collecre,., Jackson, ~[iss. L. G. Barrett
We tern College and Ind. Inst. ~raeon, ~Jo. J. H. Garnett
"'ater :\ormal In titule "'inton, _~. C. C.. Brown
Thompson Institute Lumberton, ),T. C.. " . H. Knuckle
haw Univer-ity Raleigh, N. C. C. :F. _Ie erve
:\ewbern Collegiate Institute ,Newbern, N. C. A. L. E. "eeks
Mather Industrial Sehool ,Beaufort, S. C. Miss S, E. Owen
TIenediet College Columbia, S. C, A. C. Osborn
Howe Bible and Xormal Inst. Memphi , Tenn. T. O. Fuller
Rocrer 'Yilliams Cnin'rsitv :\ashville. Tenn. J.". John on to •
Bi hop College ~rarshall, Tex. Cha . H. Maxson
Hou ton 'olle~c Houston, Tex. F. W. Gros
Hart horn Memorial College Richmond, Ya. L. n. Tefft
Yirlfinia Union nin'r ity Richmond, Va. G. R. Hovev • •
Tidewater Collegiate Institute hesapeake, Va. G. E. Read
1878
1884
1892
1876
1892
1867
1881
1886
1897
1879
1887
1877
1890
1886
1900
1865
1902
1867
1871
1888
1866
1881
1885
1883
1865
1891
1----1-·---1------- -
762
400
343
315
300
238
66]
283
193
288
320
356
102
242
180
516
153
139
666
729
107
334
113
165
253
107
19
12
18
13
9
14
50
7
8
12
10
],I.
8
6
6
33
6
8
21
12
7
20
8
12
16
4
5
13
20
30
..
-l0
12
10
7
o
36
67
18
o
9
32
o
$17.000
20,00U
10,000 •
6.500
4,000
18,000
30,000
5,210
8.500
8000
8,0/)0
12A20
5,000
3,000
5.0nO
40.000
1.500
3,000
25,000
4,000
5,000
40,000
10,000
6,050
flO,UOO
1,500
$75,000
75,000
40,000
50,000
20,000
80,000
302.405
10,500
21,000
30,000
50,000
85,000
20,000
16,000
5,000
]!l3.011
1~,000
11,500
200,000
35,000
......
175,000
20,000
8:i,000
250,000
300
8,26:3 ~353 403 $316,680 $1,861,716
Spelman Seminary graduates 1907 http://digital.ncdcr.gov/cdm/ref/collection/p249901coll37/id/4158
1908 http://digital.ncdcr.gov/cdm/ref/collection/p249901coll37/id/4158
Complete PowerPoint https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TdX292JiwC945co83EhWTGYHfdOIC9A6YByTIBzO7FU/edit#slide=id.g5cc510c46_087
Solomon, Barbara Miller. In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. Print. pp. 39-45
CHESNUTT-L Archives
Archiver > CHESNUTT > 2014-06 > 1404046922
From: gc-gateway@rootsweb.com, chesnutt@rootsweb.com
Subject: [CHESNUTT] Charles Waddell Chesnutt & Family - Cleveland, Ohio
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 13:02:02 -0000
This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list.
Author: Contribution
Surnames: Perry
Classification: biography
Message Board URL:
http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.chesnutt/38/mb.ashx
Message Board Post:
Chesnutt, Charles W. 1858-1932, Writer. Charles Waddell Chesnutt, an Afro-American man of letters, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on 20 June 1858, the son of free Blacks who had emigrated from Fayetteville, North Carolina.
When he was eight years old, Chesnutt's parents returned to Fayetteville, where Charles worked part-time in the family grocery store and attended a school founded by the Freedmen's Bureau. In 1872 financial necessity forced him to begin a teaching career in Charlotte, N.C.
He returned to Fayetteville in 1877, married a year later, and by 1880 had become principal of the Fayetteville State Normal School for Negroes.
Meanwhile he continued to pursue private studies of the English classics, foreign languages, music, and stenography. Despite his successes, he longed for broader opportunities and a chance to develop the literary skills that by 1880 led him toward an author's life. In 1883 he moved his family to Cleveland, Ohio.
There he passed the state bar examination and established his own court reporting firm. Financially prosperous and prominent in civic affairs, he resided in Cleveland for the remainder of his life.
"The Goophered Grapevine," an unusual dialect story that displayed intimate knowledge of Black folk culture in the South, was Chesnutt's first nationally recognized work of fiction. Its publication in the August 1887 issue of the Atlantic Monthly marked the first time that a short story by a Black had appeared in that prestigious magazine. After subsequent tales in this vein were accepted by other magazines, Chesnutt submitted to Houghton, Mifflin a collection of these stories, which was published in 1899 as The Conjure Woman. His second collection of short fiction, The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1899), ranged over a broader area of southern and northern racial experience than any previous writer on Black American life had attempted. These two volumes were popular enough to convince Houghton, Mifflin to publish Chesnutt's first novel, The House Behind the Cedars, in 1900. This story of two Blacks who pass for white in the postwar South revealed Ch!
esnutt's sense of the psychological and social dilemmas facing persons of mixed blood in the region. His second novel, The Marrow of Tradition (1901), is based on the Wilmington, N.C., race riot of 1898. Hoping to write the Uncle Tom's Cabin of his generation, Chesnutt made a plea for racial justice that impressed William Dean Howells as a work of "great power," though with "more justice than mercy in it." The failure of the book to sell widely forced Chesnutt to give up his dream of supporting his family as a professional author. In 1905 he published his final novel, The Colonel's Dream, a tragic story of an idealist's attempt to revive a depressed North Carolina town through a socioeconomic program much akin to the New South creed of Henry W. Grady and Booker T. Washington. The novel received little critical notice.
During the latter years of his life Chesnutt continued to write and publish occasional short stories, but he was largely eclipsed in the 1920s by the writers of the Harlem Renaissance. He was awarded the Spingarn Medal in 1928 by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for his pioneering literary work on behalf of the Afro-American struggle. Today Chesnutt is recognized as a major innovator in the tradition of Afro American fiction, an important contributor to the deromanticizing trend in post-Civil War southern literature and a singular voice among turn-of-the-century realists who treated the color line in American life.
Name: Chesnutt, Charles Waddell
Date: Nov 18 1932
Source: Source unknown; Cleveland Necrology File, Reel #014.
Notes: Chesnutt: Charles Waddell, age 74 years, residence, 9719 Lamont Ave., beloved husband of Susan, father of Ethel Williams, Helen and Edwin Chesnutt, Dorothy Slade.
Funeral from late residence, Friday, at 2 p.m.
Name: Chesnutt, Dr. Edwin J.
Date: Sep 27 1939
Source: Source unknown; Cleveland Necrology File, Reel #014.
Notes: Chesnutt: Dr. Edwin J., son of Mrs. Susan U. and the late Charles W. Chesnutt, brother of Mrs. Joseph Beaman of Washington, D. C., Helen M. and Mrs. John Slade, died Monday evening at the residence of his mother, 10829 Morison ave.
Funeral Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2:30 p.m. at the Emmanuel Church, 8614 Euclid ave.
Name: Chesnutt, Susan U.
Date: Jun 21 1940
Source: Source unknown; Cleveland Necrology File, Reel #014.
Notes: Chesnutt: Susan U., beloved wife of the late Charles W., mother of Mrs. Joseph Beaman, Washington, D.C.; Mrs. John Slade and Miss Helen M. Chesnutt, died suddenly at her home Tuesday, June 18.
Services at Emmanuel Episcopal Church. 8614 Euclid Ave., Friday, June 21, at 2:30 p.m. Friends may call at the residence, 10829 Morison Ave., Cleveland, Ohio.
Name: Slade, Dorothy Chesnutt
Date: Jan 1 1955
Source: Cleveland Press; Cleveland Necrology File, Reel #156.
Notes: Slade, Dorothy Chesnutt, beloved wife of Dr. John G. Slade, mother of John, sister of Helen M. Chesnutt, and of Ethel Chesnutt Beaman of Washington, D. C., died at her residence, 10829 Morison Ave., Dec. 29.
Funeral services at the House of Wills, 2491 E. 55 St., Monday, Jan. 3, at 1 p.m.
In lieu of flowers friends may make contributions to the Cancer Fund.
Name: Chesnutt, Helen Maria
Date: Aug 10 1969
Source: Plain Dealer; Cleveland Necrology File, Reel #099.
Notes: Chesnutt. Helen Maria Chesnutt, beloved daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Charles W. Chesnutt, Passed away Thursday, August 7, of Margaret Wagner House.
Funeral services will be Monday, August 11 at The House of Willis, 2491 E. 55th St. of 10:30 a.m.
The family will receive friends Sunday. At The Funeral Home, 2-6 P.M.
Name: Chesnutt, Lewis H.
Date: Jan 18 1933
Source: Source unknown; Cleveland Necrology File, Reel #014.
Notes: Chesnutt: Lewis H., of 1250 E. 85th, husband of Rosa B., father of Mrs. William H. Brooks, Clara E., Marian G., stepfather of Mrs. A. G. Evans, brother of Mrs. Lillian Richardson, Andrew J. and the late Charles W.
Funeral Thursday, Jan. 19, 2 p.m., from the residence.
Charles Waddell Chesnutt was a mixed race author, essayist, political activist and lawyer, best known for his novels and short stories exploring complex issues of racial and social identity in the post-Civil War South. Wikipedia
Born: June 20, 1858, Cleveland, OH
Died: November 17, 1932, Cleveland, OH
Spouse: Susan Perry (m. 1878)
Movies: The House Behind the Cedars, The Conjure Woman, The Doll
Parents: Ann Maria Sampson Chesnutt, Andrew Chesnutt
Cuyahoga County
Important Note:
The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board.
<br>
This thread:
RootsWeb is funded and supported by Ancestry.com and our loyal RootsWeb community. Learn more.
About Us | Contact Us | Acceptable Use Policy | PRIVACY STATEMENT | Copyright
© 2016 Ancestry.com
Furlow Masonic Female College 1876
http://www.sumtercountyhistory.com/history/AmSchHx.htm
Masonic female college patron, Col. Timothy Mathews Furlow
Black children began their education in ten churches, halls and other buildings scattered about the city, under the leadership of George W.F. Phillips, grammar school principal, A.R. Cooper, intermediate school principal and J.H. Covington, primary school principal.
Shortly after the realization of his dream, the board's first president, Rev. Dr. George F. Cooper, died in 1882. Prof. J.E. Mathis, in 1940, had a huge boulder (characterizing Cooper's ruggedness) with bronze plaque erected as a memorial, at his grave site in Oak Grove Cemetery. The plaque bears the inscription: Dr. George F. Cooper 1825-1882 Pastor First Baptist Church Leading Physician Father of Americus Public Schools.
Two years later, in 1884, Black pupils acquired their own school building, McCay (pronounced McCoy) Hill School, on a twoacre lot, east side Poplar, between Academy and McCoy. Designed and constructed by local Black architects and contractors, Samuel Stevens and Jefferson Jones, the school's first principal was Prof. George Washington Franklin Phillips. It housed grades one through seven. Again reflecting the tenor of their times, a high school for Blacks was regarded as superfluous. Local opportunities for Black higher education would have to await the establishment of Prof. Major W. Reddick's Americus Institute in 1897. Although not an affiliate of the city's school system, it served a complementary purpose until its closure in 1932, allowing Black scholars to supplement their primary education without leaving the community.
1884 Prof, G.W.F. Phillips and Lee Jones started the Franklin Square Library at McCay Hill School, the city's first-ever public library for Blacks who, under segregation, could not avail themselves of the city public library on Jackson (presently the location of the old Carnegie Library).
In January 1920 came the announcement of McCay Hill School's selection as having the first auto mechanic vocational curriculum in the state, Black or white, under the Smith-Hughes Vocational Education Act. State inspector J.F. Cannon reported that this was the first school to undertake this line of instruction in Georgia under federal aid. Ernest Barnett, well known mechanic with W.G. Turpin & Co. (now Halstead Chevrolet) was the instructor.
Domestic science, that generation's term for home economics, had been instituted at McCay Hill two years earlier for the female students. Under the supervision of Miss Oziebel Hart, a Spelman graduate and daughter of pioneer Black businessman Matt Hart, the department consisted of a domestic science home, a neat cottage of four rooms, with a kitchen, dining room and laundry
Letters and Other Texts Illuminate Smith Journey of
Charles Chesnutt’s Daughters Ethel and Helen,
1897-1901
Pamela E. Foster, M.S.J., Smith ’85
Nat’l Special Projects Chair, Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society
Smith College’s
First Black Students
Otelia Cromwell, the first known African American student to graduate from Smith College, in 1900, is marching with her classmates on Ivy Day 1900 (from M.M. Roys Papers).
Smith College’s first known Black graduate
Otelia Cromwell at her desk, 1900, presumably at at 275 Main Street, where the college circular says she lived during her senior year.
On June 5, 1950, she received an honorary LLD.
Her citation reads:
"She returns to Smith College with a rich and satisfying record of achievement in the teaching of English literature and the supervision of secondary education....As teacher and as scholar she has communicated to her students a perceptive appreciation of literature, has led through her own insight to a better knowledge of themselves, their talents and potentialities, and by example even more than by precept has demonstrated that the fundamental values of scholarship are also those of humane living--integrity, tolerance, and sympathetic understanding."
She died in 1972 at age 98.
Otelia Cromwell, seated left, in 1950 as she joins fellow Smith College honorary degree recipients of that year and the college president. Back row: Dr. Hyla S. Waters, class of 1915, and Benjamin F. Wright, president of the College 1949-59. Front row: beside Cromwell are Mary Josephine Rogers, Class of 1905 (Mother Mary Joseph), and Katharine Asher Engle, Class of 1920.
Otelia Cromwell Day is an annual slate of workshops, lectures, films and entertainment held to honor Smith's first African American graduate.
The first Otelia Cromwell Day was held in 1989 in an effort to provide the college community with an opportunity for further education and reflection about issues of diversity and racism.
For Otelia Cromwell, 1874–1972
By Nikky Finney
Smith College commissioned award-winning poet Nikky Finney to compose a poem in honor of Otelia Cromwell. Finney recited the poem, "Maven," during the Otelia Cromwell Day convocation November 10, 2009
.
MAVEN
Genus: Daughter
"When you are a thinking woman neither violence or sugar plums can muzzle the power of thought."
Imagine, hatch, comprehend, apprehend:
Know the inside and the out. You are just
a girl when your mother dies. Left to tend
the rest of the flock, you, the oldest,
the one most like your father, taught
to leave no stone unturned, marry thrift
and industry, while burying your head
in the stacks. Sang-froid but never
silent. Inquire, picture, ponder, think
over, think and think, again. Giddy
with your own mind, "Master everything"
is the family crest, no veil feigning, faking,
guise, masquerade, or fanfare. There is
a right way and a wrong. When you give
your hand to the world, your responsibility:
To have a mind, keep in mind, change
a mind—and be the last to die.
Genus: Scholar
"An educated group is a thinking group."
Intuit, divine, check and recheck, invent:
Know the backward and the forward.
You care nothing for the popular, even
less for the slipshod. Your arms flower
with all the leading out books, choosing
wisely what and who trains you: Frankness,
virtuoso, mastery, crackerjack. Think and
think, again. You leave college and university
exceptionally prepared. You are complex
and astute, as calm as a comma. No time
for jewelry or parlor beaus. There is
a gold watch, a signet ring, a Smith
College pin: White letters on gold just
above the heart. Diligent, proficient, self-
possessed, you weigh in with words, to state
your tolerance to the inefficient. You never
back down from what is right. Young Adelaide
is your "dependable" and the 9th graders
leaning in to your instruction whisper: This
must be college. You gray beautifully—but early.
Genus: Writer
"The genius does not write to please."
(nor live to marry)
Veritas. Words pulled through a fine-tooth
comb, then, before sleep, pulled through,
again. You refuse to segregate language from
life, read German for sport and swing golf
clubs just to stay on the qui vive. You write
of the legality of taxes, pica out democracy,
vow and edit for the intergral Negro intellectual.
Winnow, probe, sift through, quest: Think
and think, again. Solemnly engaged now to
Lucretia & Thomas, you dislike being called
"Dr." and remain forever keen on "Miss."
What the dutiful trained hand can perfectly
stitch delights you. Unconventional and easy-
going, your desire never wanes: To be put
through the paces, edify, enlighten, to work
outward—from simple seam to monogram.
We herald your bright hallmark of firsts,
those sprightly high-waisted truths; the soft-
spoken whippersnapper, eloping still.
All words in italics are the words of Otelia Cromwell.
©2009 Nikky Finney.
Author of four books of poetry: Head Off & Split (2011); The World Is Round(2003); Rice (1995); and On Wings Made of Gauze (1985). The John H. Bennett, Jr. Chair in Southern Letters and Literature at the University of South Carolina, Finney also authored Heartwood (1997) edited The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (2007), and co- founded the Affrilachian Poets. Finney's fourth book of poetry, Head Off & Split was awarded the 2011 National Book Award for poetry.
The Life and Legacy of Otelia Cromwell is a 2014 video about Smith's first African American graduate, created as part of the college's 25th annual celebration in her honor. The video traces Cromwell’s life from her childhood in the 1870s to her emergence as a scholar and author.
| | | | | | | | | | | |
Words of Otelia Cromwell Captured in Niece's Book
Adelaide Cromwell to Visit Smith Feb. 10, 2011
By Eric Weld in Grécourt Gate News
Adelaide Cromwell ’40 will always remember her beloved aunt as Aunt Tee, the pet name she had for her since childhood.
Adelaide, now 90, recalls her favorite of four aunts, Otelia Cromwell, as a mother figure in a book published this year by Smith College. My Mothering Aunt: Otelia Cromwell is a remembrance of the lifelong relationship between Adelaide and Otelia Cromwell, highlighted by a collection of some 80 letters written from Otelia to Adelaide during the niece’s years at Smith.
Otelia Cromwell has become a renowned name at Smith. The first African American graduate of the college, in 1900, has become a symbol of diversity and appreciation of difference as Smith annually celebrates Otelia Cromwell Day with a
Cover of My Mothering Aunt features portrait of Otelia Cromwell and her niece, the author, Adelaide Cromwell.
series of lectures, workshops and cultural events that reflect those values.
Adelaide, who often attends the annual event, will visit Smith on Thursday, Feb. 10, to celebrate the launch of My Mothering Aunt with a tea and book signing in the Alumnae House Living Room from 4:15 to 5:15 p.m. The event, which is co-sponsored by the Black Students Alliance and the Office of Multicultural Affairs, is open to the Smith community.
“Adelaide Cromwell is a role model for many of us,” said L’Tanya Richmond, director of multicultural affairs. “Her legacy of scholarship and leadership lives on here at Smith, which has a distinguished tradition of developing women leaders.”
An Evening with Adelaide Cromwell is part of the month long celebration of Black History Month at Smith. Other events include a keynote lecture by poet and activist Nikki Giovanni on Saturday, Feb. 26,
Adelaide Cromwell also graduated from Smith College, class of 1940. She is the author of at least nine books.
at 2 p.m. in Stoddard Auditorium. Lillian Lambert, author of the memoir The Road to Someplace Better: From the Segregated South to Harvard Business School and Beyond, will give the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Lecture on Thursday, Feb. 17, at 4:30 p.m. in Neilson Browsing Room.
Motherly Advice
With narrative interludes by Adelaide Cromwell, who is a professor emerita of sociology at Boston University, My Mothering Aunt provides snippets of advice from Otelia, who cared for and watched over her niece, guiding her undergraduate path, supplying her wardrobe with stylish clothing she often made herself, and helping to support her financially.
“…You did look smart this morning,” writes Otelia to Adelaide in September 1937, early in her sophomore year, in a letter that signifies Otelia’s concern for her niece’s wardrobe. “That green outfit has much strength in it yet. Perhaps you will be wearing it all four years for your fall train suit. Don’t get alarmed, I am not suggesting that you will not have anything else, you will, but good old clothes are like good old wine.”
Of course, as a doting aunt, Otelia advised her niece on academic matters as well. “I am glad that you are pleased with your major,” she wrote to Adelaide in April 1938, “but if I were you, I should not take any more courses in my major than the minimum requirement number because you will have spent all the opportunity in graduate studying for your major. …I think you need some more work in the humanities…You really should not leave Smith College without coming within earshot of the English department.”
Smith College plays heavily into the intertwined stories of Adelaide and Otelia. Though Adelaide as a girl briefly entertained a desire to attend college elsewhere, her Aunt Tee, who had no children, would consider only her alma mater for her only niece, Adelaide writes.
Both women followed their Smith graduation with distinguished careers as educators, each breaking barriers in their time.
Otelia Cromwell, who was the first African American woman to receive a Yale degree, taught English language and literature for many years at Miner Teachers College in Washington, D.C., eventually becoming chair of the department. After her retirement, she accomplished her most significant scholarly work, The Life of Lucretia Mott, about the Quaker abolitionist and women’s rights activist. Cromwell received an honorary degree from Smith in 1950. She died in 1972 at age 99.
Thanks to her Aunt Tee’s broad support, Adelaide Cromwell went on to a distinguished career, also as an educator.
After earning her doctorate in sociology from Radcliffe College, she became the first African American instructor at Hunter College and later repeated that distinction at Smith. On faculty at Boston University for 34 years, Cromwell co-founded the university’s African studies program and founded and directed its Afro-American studies program, the nation’s first graduate program in that field.
Copies of My Mothering Aunt will be distributed free of charge at Grécourt Bookshop after Feb. 10, as supplies last.
Unveiled Voices, Unvarnished Memories: The Cromwell Family in Slavery and Segregation, 1692-1972 by Adelaide M. Cromwell
Smith College: Adelaide Cromwell, a 1940 alumna of Smith, was hired to the faculty as an instructor of sociology in 1945. Her aunt, Otelia Cromwell, was the first Black graduate of Smith College in 1900. Adelaide Cromwell earned a master's degree at the University of Pennsylvania and then taught at Hunter College in New York City before coming to Smith. In announcing her appointment to the Smith faculty in 1945, the Boston Herald noted, "An auspicious circumstance attending this precedent is the fact that [the decision of Smith] was at least in part motivated by the demand of the student newspaper for a Negro faculty member to refute the fallacy of racism. The elders on the board of trustees were wise to heed the wishes of the youth, who are facing 'the beam of day.' "
--http://cr.middlebury.edu/amlit_civ/allen/2012%20backup/winter2012/history-Black-faculty.pdf
Other books by Adelaide M. Cromwell include The Other Brahmins: Boston's Black Upper Class, 1750-1950, 1994; Dynamics of the African/Afro-American Connection: From Dependency to Self-Reliance, 1987; The Negro Upper Class in Boston - Its Development and Present Social Structure, 1952;
Apropos of Africa: Sentiments of Negro American Leaders on Africa from the 1800s to the 1950s, 1969; An African Victorian Feminist: The Life and Times of Adelaide Smith Casely Hayford 1848-1960, 2004; Fierce Solitude: a Life of J.g. Fletcher, 1994; How the American Negro Relates to Africa, 1964; and Developing a Black Meritocracy: A History of Black Graduates of the Boston Latin School, 1985.
Helen Maria Chesnutt (1881-1969), Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College.
Ethel Perry Chesnutt (1879-1962?), Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College.
Contrary to the college archives’ statement that, “The legacy of the Black Students Alliance at Smith College begins in 1898 when the first African American student, Otelia Cromwell, matriculated,” Ethel and Helen Chesnutt are the first Black women known to enter Smith College.
They entered as freshmen in 1897, a year before Otelia Cromwell entered as a junior and twenty-two years after the college opened in 1875, following its 1871 charter. They graduated in 1901. Cromwell graduated in 1900.
Smith College’s first two known Black students
The legacy of the Black Students Alliance at Smith College begins in 1898 when the first African American student, Otelia Cromwell, matriculated. Seventy years later the Black Students Alliance (BSA) was officially chartered to "establish for its members a sense of unity and identity within the smaller community of Smith College while at the same time emphasizing their common interest in, and relationship to, the larger Black community of the nation." Learn more about the BSA's history through this exhibition.
Corrected as of 2-15-2016
When Otelia Cromwell was at Smith, there were only two other African American students on campus. Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, both Class of 1901, were the daughters of Harlem Renaissance writer Charles W. Chesnutt.
How each dealt with the fact that they were the only people of color on the campus is unknown. We do know they all lived off-campus: Otelia Cromwell on Round Hill Road, then later Main Street; the Chesnutt sisters at 30 Green Street [after previously living at 95 West Street freshman year, 10 Green Street sophomore year, and 36 Green Street junior year].
There is little to no personal material about the Chesnutt sisters in the College Archives. A single piece of information from an entry in English Professor Mary Jordan's diary suggests they were unhappy with their Smith College experience. The entry notes the "Chesnutt girls are having a hard time with the color line…."
As of January 2014
Partially corrected as of 2-15-2016
Published March 7, 2016
Five buildings that make up a new 80-bed student apartment complex at Smith will be named for graduates from diverse backgrounds to reflect the college’s history of pioneering alumnae.
The new buildings will be known as: Cromwell House, after Otelia Cromwell, class of 1900, Smith’s first African American student; DeCora House, after Angel DeCora, class of 1896, Smith’s first Native American student; Hashimy House, after Sabiha Yassin Hashimy, class of 1937, Smith’s first Middle Eastern student; Machado House, after Salomé Amelia Machado, class of 1883, Smith’s first Latina student; and Ninomiya House, after Tei Ninomiya, class of 1910, Smith’s first Asian student.
The names were approved by the Smith College Board of Trustees at its March 5 meeting.
“The names of our houses are important signals of what we value,” President Kathleen McCartney said. “This is an opportunity to honor women who were pioneers as well as to underscore our commitment to make Smith a more inclusive community.”
The apartment complex, Smith’s first new student residence in a decade, will be known as the Friedman Complex. The Friedman name currently references a group of apartments on Henshaw Avenue, named for Robert and Eugenie Friedman, Smith College class of 1947. The original Friedman apartments will be renamed the Henshaw Complex and will serve as temporary office space during the renovation of Neilson Library.
The new apartments, located on Paradise Road and designed by the Seattle-based architecture firm of Olson Kundig, incorporate sustainable design standards targeted for LEED Gold certification. They will be dedicated at a ribbon-cutting ceremony in May in the company of the Smith College Board of Trustees. Students and faculty from the Smith College School for Social Work will stay in the apartments this summer, with the first undergraduates moving in for fall 2016.
About the Five Alumnae
Salomé Amelia Machado – 1883
Salomé Amelia Machado was the first Latina to attend Smith College. Born in Cuba in 1861, she graduated with the class of 1883. Today, she is known not only as the first Latina at Smith, but as the first woman from outside the United States to be admitted to the college. In a letter to her brother, Machado described Smith as “a perfect Paradise. Not a bit too much has been said about the beauty of its natural surroundings—nor has anything been said in favor of the College which is not true. It is really quite an ideal place.”
Angel DeCora – 1896
Angel DeCora was the first Native American to attend Smith and was a member of the class of 1896. The descendant of two prominent French Canadian-Winnebago Native American chiefs, and a member of the Thunderbird clan, DeCora’s tribal name was Hinook-Mahiwi-Kalinaka (Fleecy Cloud Floating in Space). DeCora attended Smith from 1892 to 1896. After graduating from Smith, DeCora studied at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry in Philadelphia. DeCora went on to design and illustrate a number of books on Native American subjects, as well as produce a number of designs for The Indians’ Book (published in 1907). In 1906, she accepted a position at Carlisle Indian School to teach Native American art.
Otelia Cromwell – 1900
Otelia Cromwell was the first African American to graduate from Smith College. Cromwell transferred from Howard University to Smith in 1898 and graduated in 1900. Cromwell’s life and work were characterized by a deep sense of justice and responsibility toward others, a quality that was reinforced when her mother died in 1886, leaving 12-year-old Otelia in charge of her younger siblings. She taught for a number of years, and then resumed her education, receiving a master’s degree from Columbia University and a doctorate from Yale University in 1926. Cromwell was the first African American woman to receive a Yale degree. She soon became a professor and chair of the Department of English Language and Literature at Miner Teachers College in Washington, D.C.
Tei Ninomiya – 1910
Tei Ninomiya was the first Asian student to graduate from Smith College. Born in 1887, in Matsuyama, Shikoku, Japan, she graduated from Smith in 1910. Upon graduating, Ninomiya returned to Japan, married, and spent much of her adult life as a teacher, YWCA administrator and Red Cross worker. At Smith, Ninomiya was a member of the Alpha Society, Smith’s first literary society; the Philosophical Society; Colloquium (Chemistry Society); Telescopium (Astronomy Club); and the Oriental Club, whose members were interested in the ethical, social and religious ideas originating in East Asia.
Sabiha Yassin Hashimy – 1937
Sabiha Yassin Hashimy was the first Middle Eastern student to graduate from Smith College. Living in Baghdad, Iraq, at the time of her matriculation, she transferred to Smith from the American Junior College for Women located in what is now Beirut, Lebanon. She returned to Iraq after graduating from Smith, serving as the principal of the Kirch Secondary School for Girls in Baghdad for 14 years and traveling widely in Europe and the Middle East.
About a thousand Black Smith alumnae
Parent/parent figure Student
Florence N'gendo Mwangi,1961 Wambui Mwangi, 1988
First African graduate and first woman licensed physician in Kenya
Arthur Eve Leecia Eve, 1986 (--2--) (--3--)
Nat King Cole/Carole Cole Caroline Clarke Graves, 1985
Martin Luther King, Jr. Yolanda King, 1976
Walter White (--2--) Jane White, 1944
Louis Thompkins Wright Jane Wright, 1942
Otelia Cromwell, 1900 Adelaide Cromwell, 1940
Alphaeus Hunton, Jr. Eunice Hunton, 1917/1921
Charles Chesnutt Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, 1901
Carrie Lee, ,
Stephanie Neely, 1985, Treasurer of the City of Chicago
Phoebe Northcross, ,
Total number:
Family letters/texts illuminate Smith life and beyond
Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line
To Be an Author: Letters of Charles W. Chesnutt, 1889-1905
An Exemplary Citizen: Letters of Charles W. Chesnutt, 1906-1932
The Journals of Charles W. Chesnutt
The Charles W. Chesnutt Library at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina has digitized many of the family papers and published a bibliography
Chesnutt Papers at Fisk University
their enslavers addressed in The Passing of Grandison, The Colonel’s Dream,
and other works aimed at uplift
HBCUs--Mary Holmes Seminary/State Colored Normal School
(Fayetteville State University)/Tennessee State University
Smith College--1901/1985
Newspapers--Both wrote for and about
Genealogy--Transgenerational transmission of values and ancestors’
name similarity
His parents are Ann Maria Sampson Chesnutt and
Andrew Jackson Chesnutt
My great-great-grandparents are Anna Mariah Clark Greer and
Benjamin Franklin Greer
4 Components
Charles Waddell Chesnutt, c. 1905. Author of The Colonel’s Dream, Mandy Oxendine, The Wife of His Youth, The Marrow of Tradition, and other works.
Published between 1885 and 1905
Reared in both Cleveland, Ohio, and Fayetteville, NC
Frequently chose those locales as settings for his stories
Works turned into films:
The House Behind the Cedars remade as both Oscar Micheaux’s Veiled Aristocrats and The Doll, produced by award-winning scholar and independent maker of dramatic and documentary films Dante James, under the auspices of DMD Films
The Marrow of Tradition may be next
Charles Chesnutt timeline
1856 His mother, Ann Maria Sampson, a free informal teacher, and her
mother, Chloe, move to Cleveland, Ohio, from Fayetteville, NC, in
a wagon train party that includes his father, Andrew Chesnutt
1857, July 26 Ann Maria Sampson and Andrew Jackson Chesnutt marry in Cleveland
and the couple lives with her mother on Hudson Street. Andrew
works as driver-conductor on the new Kinsman Street Omnibus Line
horsecars
1858, June 20 Charles Waddell Chesnutt born, imbued with honorable ideals,
principles and destiny, and family moves to Oberlin, Ohio. Andrew
took job as his uncle’s wheelwright assistant
1858, Sept. Andrew arrested for helping to retrieve a captured slave in
Oberlin-Wellington rescue case, in violation of the 1793 and
1850 Fugitive Slave Acts
1860 Brother Lewis born and family returns to Cleveland from Oberlin
1861-1865 Andrew serves as Union Army teamster
1866 Andrew Chesnutt moves family to Fayetteville, NC, from Cleveland,
Ohio, to be with his ailing father, a white man who acknowledged his
children by his Black mistress and got Andrew both interested in
education and set up in owning and operating a grocery store on
Gillespie Street. Later Republican Andrew becomes Cumberland
County commissioner and justice of the peace. Charles attends the
Howard School, operated on high standards of morality and
scholarship, and later helps his father in the grocery store,
absorbing the customs of the local characters.
http://faculty.uncfsu.edu/jyoung/chesnuttandrew.htm
Charles W. Chesnutt's Fayetteville: A (Virtual) Literary Tour
1866 Con’t. At age 9 saw a man killed
1871 Mother dies. Grandmother Chloe and her husband, Moses
Harris, who had moved to Fayetteville from Cleveland to help
care for family, now run the Andrew Chesnutt household. First cousin once removed Mary Olchitree moves in to help with children and attend the Howard School. Andrew later takes Mary as his second wife
1872 Father’s grocery store fails and family moves to farm outside
Fayetteville. Charles becomes pupil-teacher under principal
Robert Harris at the Howard School in Fayetteville
1873 Charles becomes assistant principal under principal Cicero
Harris at the Peabody School in Charlotte, NC
1877 Charles becomes assistant principal under principal at the
State Colored Normal School in Fayetteville
1878, June 6 Susan Perry, a teacher at the Howard School and daughter of
Fayetteville Hotel barber shop proprietor, marries Charles
1879, April Daughter Ethel born
1880 Declines Republican nomination for Fayetteville town
commissioner. Becomes principal at the State Colored Normal
School in Fayetteville. Daughter Helen born in December
1883 Resigns as principal at the State Colored Normal School in
Fayetteville in May. Moves to New York, where he works as reporter for the Dow, Jones and Co. news agency and writes
Wall Street news column for New York Mail and Express. Son, Edwin, born in Fayetteville in September. Leaves New York in November and moves to Cleveland, where he works in accounting department of Nickel Plate Railroad Co.
1884 Brings wife and children from Fayetteville to live in rented house
on Wilcutt Avenue in Cleveland. Later family moves to house on
Ashland Avenue
1885-1886 Family moves to house on Florence Street. Transfers to
stenographer job in legal department of Nickel Plate Railroad Co., where he studies law with company counsel
Samuel Williamson, a former county common pleas court judge. Sells first stories, published in various newspapers, including Cleveland News and Herald
1887-1888 The Goophered Grapevine in the Atlantic Monthly. Passes Ohio
bar exam with highest grade in his group. Works at law firm of
Henderson, Kline, and Tolles as stenographer. Other short
stories and sketches published while building stenography
business, including opening own office
1889 Begins correspondence with novelist George Washington
Cable, declines offer to become Cable’s secretary and visits
Cable in Northampton, MA. Family moves to newly built house
at 64 Brenton Street. Continues to publish essays and short
stories as he writes novel The House Behind the Cedars/Rena
1890, Dec. Daughter Dorothy born
1896 Travels to Paris and England
1897 Daughters Ethel and Helen graduate from Central High School,
reject Western Reserve University, and enter Smith College
1897-1898 The Wife of His Youth. Both Mandy Oxendine and A Business
Career rejected and later published posthumously
1899 The Conjure Woman, Frederick Douglass biography, and The
Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line. Begins
presenting public lectures. Closes stenographic business
1900 The House Behind the Cedars published. Begins writing The
Marrow of Tradition
1901 Daughters Ethel and Helen graduate from Smith. Delivers
speech at memorial service for President William McKinley. The
Marrow of Tradition published. Opens new stenographic office
1903 Evelyn’s Husband rejected and later published posthumously
1904 Family moves to new house at 1668 (later renumbered 9719)
Lamont Avenue
1905 The Colonel’s Dream. Son, Edwin, graduates from Harvard
College. Invited attendee at Mark Twain’s 70th birthday party at
Delmonico’s in New York City
1906 Play Mrs. Darcy’s Daughter produced
1909-1910 Co-founds the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People and becomes member of its general
committee. Suffers minor stroke. Declines to endorse Du Bois’s
public criticism of Booker T. Washington
1912 The Doll. Tours Europe with daughter Helen
1913 Leads successful fight to defeat Ohio bill prohibiting interracial
marriage. Awarded honorary LL.D. degree by Wilberforce
University. Daughter Dorothy graduates from Western Reserve
University and goes on to become juvenile court probation
officer then schoolteacher
1915 Crashes car, killing young female passenger and injuring his
wife, after buying car and learning to drive the previous year.
Son graduates from dental school at Northwestern University
and opens practice in Chicago
1917 Leads successful fight to ban The Birth of a Nation film in
Cleveland
1920 Suffers appendicitis. Father, Andrew Jackson Chesnutt, dies
1921 Paul Marchand, F.M.C. rejected and published posthumously
1928 Wins Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
1906-1932 Wrote and published little, including a few short stories and
essays. Lots of travel.
1932, Nov. 15 Dies, buried in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio.
Obituary (by W. E. B. Du Bois)
Crisis, January 1933
CHARLES WADDELL CHESNUTT, genial American gentleman and dean of Negro literature in this land, is dead. We have lost a fine intellect, a keen sense of humor and broad tolerant philosophy. Chesnutt was of that group of white folk who because of a more or less remote Negro ancestor identified himself voluntarily with the darker group, studies them, expressed them, defended them, and yet never forgot the absurdity of this artificial position and always refused to admit its logic or its ethical sanction. He was not a Negro; he was a man. But this fact never drove him to the opposite extreme. He did not repudiate persons of Negro blood as social equals and close friends. If his white friends (and he had legions) could not tolerate colored friends they need not come to Mr. Chesnutt's home. If colored friends demanded racial segregation and hatred, he had no patience with them. Merit and friendship in his broad and tolerant mind knew no lines of color or race, and all men, good, bad, and indifferent, were simply men. God rest his beautiful memory.
--The Charles Chesnutt Digital Archive
With the 31st stamp in its Black Heritage series, the U.S. Postal Service honors Charles W. Chesnutt (1858–1932), a pioneering writer recognized today as a major innovator and singular voice among turn–of–the–century literary realists. In novels such as The Marrow of Tradition and short stories such as those collected in The Conjure Woman he probed the color line in American life.
Issue Date: January 09, 2012. SKU:462876.
Currently, the site offers sixty three texts of the more than one hundred and forty texts by Chesnutt that were published in his lifetime. More specifically, the site includes thirty five short stories, the French translation of one story, one novel, seventeen essays, and three poems. Seven of these texts have never been reprinted since their original magazine publication (two of the stories, the French translation, two essays, and two poems). In addition, this section of the site includes a transcription from a manuscript in the Chesnutt Collection at Fisk University of an unpublished poem.
A few of these texts are available in other electronic libraries (e.g. those stories that were published in the two collections brought out in Chesnutt's lifetime are available at Google Books and at "Documenting the American South"), but many are presented here for the first time in a digital format. When possible we have scanned the texts from the original print source.
Later this year and in the first few months of 2008, We will be adding digital images of manuscripts from the Charles Chesnutt Collection in the Fisk University Library's Special Collections. A preview of one page is available at Manuscripts
Please request permission before reprinting any texts presented here.
Finally, you may want to visit the Reviews section of the site. Here we have collected more approximately three hundred reviews that were published in a wide range of newspapers and magazines and written by Chesnutt's contemporaries.
Reproduction of a photograph depicting the Oberlin Rescuers at the Cuyahoga County Jail in April 1859. These twenty men were arrested upon attempting to free an alleged slave from his captors. The event became known as the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue. The image was collected by Ohio State University professor Wilbur H. Siebert (1866-1961).
The 14-room house into which the Charles Chesnutt family moved in 1904 at 1668 (later renumbered 9719) Lamont Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio. Charles lived there for 28 years until his death in 1932. The family moved out in 1936 and the house, situated on a lot 300 feet deep by 70 feet wide, was torn down when the Charles Orr School was built on the site. Charles W. Chesnutt School is on E. 71 & Kinsman.
The Chesnutts spent the summer holiday of 1897 at Linwood Park, Vermillion, Ohio, on Lake Erie, about thirty miles west of Cleveland.
--CWC p. 79
Once inside, Linwood Park is a world away, a peaceful and quiet place, that never changes. When entering "through the gates" for a summer vacation, I always took off my watch to forget about time. Finally at the end of one vacation, when leaving the park, instead of putting my watch back on, I threw it away. That has made a difference in how I feel about life.
--Ray Boas http://www.rayboasbookseller.com/LINWOOD/linwoodpark.htm
Once considered the most famous African-American resort community in the country, Idlewild was referred to as the Black Eden of Michigan in the 1920s and '30s, and as the Summer Apollo of Michigan in the 1950s and '60s. Showcasing classy revues and interactive performances of some of the leading Black entertainers of the period, Idlewild was an oasis in the shadows of legal segregation. Idlewild: Black Eden of Michigan focuses on this illustrative history, as well as the decline and the community's contemporary renaissance, in over 200 rare photographs. The lively legacy of Lela G. and Herman O. Wilson, and Paradise Path is included, featuring images of the Paradise Club and Wilson's Grocery. Idlewild continued its role as a distinctive American resort throughout the 1950s, with photographs ranging from Phil Giles' Flamingo Club and Arthur Braggs's Idlewild Revue. --Jacket
Idlewild: The Black Eden of Michigan (MI) (Images of America) Paperback – August 11, 2001, by Ronald J. Stephens
Ronald J. Stephens, Idlewild: The Rise, Decline, and Rebirth of a Unique African American Resort Town (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013)
Lewis Walker and Ben. C. Wilson, Black Eden: The Idlewild Community (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2002)
--"Come to Idlewood" Brochure, ca. 1955
(Ronald Stephens Collection)
--http://www.Blackpast.org/aah/idlewild-michigan-1912#sthash.w9FYUwX0.dpuf
Ronald J. Stephens, a Detroit native, is the author of Idlewild: The Rise, Decline, and Rebirth of a Unique African American Resort Town from the University of Michigan Press, Idlewild: The Black Eden of Michigan from Arcadia Publishing, and co-curator of Welcome to Idlewild, a Michigan State University Museum traveling photographic exhibition (2003-present).
In addition to his publications about Idlewild, Dr. Stephens has published essays about other topics involving African American community studies. Specializing in 20th-century African American history and culture, Professor Stephens has also worked as a research assistant on Ted Talbert’s award-winning documentary-film Idlewild: A Place in the Sun, and appeared on and been cited in Idlewild: The Real Thing (an edition of Tony Brown’s Journal), Idlewild (an NPR production), Idlewild: Rebuilding Paradise (a Flint’s ABC 12 Special program), Are We There Yet? Americans on Vacation (a History Channel program), Idlewild, Michigan: A Black Historical Resort (on Milwaukee’s Black Nouveau series), and Historic African-American Towns (a High Noon Productions program for Home and Gardens Television).
--http://www.Blackpast.org/contributor/stephens-ronald-j#sthash.YDlFnI2c.dpuf
Idlewild, like other all-Black resorts, would not survive the civil rights movement. As formerly white-only clubs and resorts across the nation integrated in the late 1960s, Idlewild went into decline. Its clubs and hotels closed as Blacks began to frequent other resorts. Today, Idlewild is a struggling retirement community with fewer than half a dozen businesses. Despite this decline, Idlewild symbolized the heyday of the combination of race, leisure, and geography to create a briefly prosperous community through niche tourism.
--http://www.Blackpast.org/aah/idlewild-michigan-1912#sthash.w9FYUwX0.dpuf
Ronald J. Stephens is associate professor in the Department of African American Studies at Ohio University.
--http://www.Blackpast.org/aah/idlewild-michigan-1912#sthash.w9FYUwX0.dpuf
Idlewild, Michigan, was one of the leading African American resorts in the era of Jim Crow segregation. White land developers marketed Idlewild as an all-Negro resort town in Lake County, Michigan, about 300 miles northwest of Chicago, Illinois and 250 miles north of Detroit, through the Idlewild Resort Company. Although founded in 1912, resort property sales lagged until Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, the leading Black surgeon at the time, became the first famous property owner in 1915. Williams would eventually retire at Idlewild and die there in 1931. His presence attracted his colleagues and associates in Chicago, and eventually prominent Black doctors from other Midwestern cities began purchasing property there.
Island Park (an island surrounded by Idlewild Lake), was the center of activity from 1920 to 1945. It featured the Idlewild Clubhouse, the Oakmere Hotel, and the Purple Palace Supper Club. Prominent African Americans including Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, author Charles Waddell Chesnutt, millionaire businesswoman Madam C.J. Walker, and Chicago attorney Violette Nealey Anderson purchased Idlewild property. Anderson donated her property upon her death to her sorority, Zeta Phi Beta. Yet the resort also attracted leading entertainers who made it the “Summer Apollo of Michigan” since the entertainers in turn drew audiences from Chicago, Detroit, and other Midwest cities who came solely for the popular shows.
By the 1950s and early 1960s, Idlewild reached the height of its popularity. During those years nearly 25,000 vacationers made their way to the community, temporarily overwhelmingly the permanent year-round population. During this era Idlewild boasted more than 300 Black-owned businesses.
The Flamingo and Paradise nightclubs served as economic engines driving tourism during this period. The efforts of Phil Giles and Arthur Braggs made Idlewild the nation’s foremost Black resort. Detroit hotel owner Giles managed the Hotel Giles and the Flamingo Club to showcase Idlewild as being “The Resort Capital of America.” Braggs, a Saginaw businessman, lured thousands to his Paradise Club by hosting entertainers such as Della Reese, The Four Tops, Jackie Wilson, Brook Benton, Dinah Washington, Etta James, Aretha Franklin, and George Kirby. Idlewild signified Black economic empowerment and entertainment glamour. And while the Flamingo Club did not attract famous entertainers who frequented the Paradise Club, it did showcase local and regional musicians, comedians, chorus girls, and singers such as Larry Wrice and the Flamingo All-Star Band, Luther Thompson and the Flamingo Dancers, Black Velvet (an exotic dancer), Lavern Baker, and Detroit’s Queen of the Blues, Alberta Adams. The décor—including pink flamingo motifs on the walls and mirrors—assumed iconic status and symbolized affirmation of urban Black identity.
While the clubs attracted Black patrons, they were often examples of interracial mingling. As one Idlewild resident recalled, the clubs filled to capacity every night, and on some nights, “there were more white people in there than Blacks. It wasn’t about race, it was about fun.”
--http://www.Blackpast.org/aah/idlewild-michigan-1912#sthash.w9FYUwX0.dpuf
Ethel, Edwin, and Helen in 1888, c ages 9, 5, and 7.
--Photographs of Charles W. Chesnutt and his family, gift of Helen Chesnutt to Cleveland Public Library, 1970.
Context of Black education, 1837-1901,
including Smith’s history
Before the end of the Civil War, a total of about 40 Black students graduated from colleges and universities in the
United States. Smith was the fifth of the Seven Sisters to have a known Black graduate. --The JBHE
African-descended “first graduates” at American colleges
Washington and Lee Univ. John Chavis 1799*
Middlebury College Alexander L. Twilight 1823**
Amherst College Edward Jones 1826
Bowdoin College John B. Russwurm 1826
Dartmouth College Edward Mitchell 1828
Oberlin College George B. Vashon 1844
Yale College Richard Henry Green 1857
Wesleyan College Wilbur Fisk Burns 1860
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Harvard University Law School George Lewis Ruffin 1869
Harvard College Richard Theodore Greener 1870
Bates College Henry W. Chandler 1874
Brown University Inman Page/George Washington Milford 1877***
Grinnell College Hannibal Kershaw 1879
Mt. Holyoke College Hortense Parker 1883
Colby College Adam S. Green 1887
Colgate University Matthew W. Gilbert 1887
Wellesley College Harriet Alleyne Rice 1887
Hamilton College Joseph L. Spurlarke 1889
Williams College Gaius C. Bolin 1889
University of Pittsburgh William Hunter Dammond 1893
Vassar College Anita F. Hemmings 1897****
RadcliffeCollege Alberta Virginia Scott 1898
Smith College Otelia Cromwell 1900
Pomona College Winston M.C. Dickson 1904
Barnard College Zora Neale Hurston 1928
Bryn Mawr College Enid Cook 1931
*It is not known if Chavis earned a bachelor's degree. After Chavis, no Black student attended the university until 1966.
**Middlebury College awarded an honorary master’s degree in 1804 to Lemuel Haynes, an African American who fought in the Revolutionary War.
***Student body president/ class historian
****Vassar College did not know that Anita Hemmings was an African American when she was admitted. The first student to graduate from Vassar who openly acknowledged her African American heritage was Beatrix McCleary in 1940.
--http://www.jstor.org/stable/4133630 --http://www.jbhe.com/chronology/
College scene-setting photographs, mostly from 1899
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD5M_n3aV6g&list=PL52360D6312B68799&index=6
Class of 1901 at Paine College, a private liberal arts institution affiliated with the Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church and the United Methodist Church in Augusta, Georgia, founded in 1882.
In 1900, W. E. B. Du Bois found that there were around 2,600 living African Americans who had graduated from post-secondary institutions.
The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education chronology shows that approximately 390 of the degrees then were from white colleges and universities, meaning about 2,200 were from HBCUs.
Had it not been for the Negro school and college, the Negro would, to all intents and purposes, have been driven back to slavery. His economic foothold in land and capital was too slight in ten years of turmoil to effect any defense or stability … But already, through establishing public schools and private colleges, and by organizing the Negro church, the Negro had acquired enough leadership and knowledge to thwart the worst designs of the new slave drivers.
Historically Black colleges and universities
--The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
Antebellum
Cheyney University, Pennsylvania, was the first, in 1837
Miner Normal School, 1850, 1871-1875 affiliated with Howard University
Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, started as Ashmun Institute, the first to rise to the college
or normal school level, started in 1854
Wilberforce University educated many planters’ children, beginning in 1856
Postbellum
Fisk University is founded in Nashville, Tennessee, 1866
Howard University is founded in Washington, D.C., 1867
Morehouse College (originally known as Augusta Institute) in Atlanta, Georgia, 1867
Saint Augustine’s College in Raleigh, North Carolina, founded by Episcopal Church, 1867
Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (now University) is founded in Virginia, 1868
By 1870, approximately 22 historically Black colleges and universities
By 1880, approximately 45 Black colleges and universities
Spelman College, the nation’s first historically Black college for women, is founded in Atlanta,
Georgia, 1881
Tuskegee Institute is established in Alabama with Booker T. Washington as its first principal,
1881
Post Reconstruction
Mary Holmes Seminary, women in Mississippi, started in 1892
Black Mammy Memorial Institute, Athens, Georgia, started in 1910
Of the at least 242 HBCUs in operation by 1908, at least 30 were started by the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. both before and after it created a Board of Missions for Freedmen in 1865. The Presbyterian schools include five seminaries for Black women in operation by 1898:
01 Alice Lee Elliott Academy, Valliant, OK �
02 Arkadelphia Academy, Cotton Plant, AK �
03 Barber-Scotia Junior College, Concord, NC �
04 Boggs Academy, Keyesville, GA �
05 Bowling Green Academy and Students' Home,
Bowling Green, KY �06 Brainerd Institute, Chester, SC �
07 Coulter Memorial Academy, Cheraw, SC �
08 Fee Community Station and Memorial Institute,
Nicholasville, KY �09 Fisk University, Nashville, TN 1866 �
10 Gould Academy, Chadbourn, NC�
11 Harbison Institute, Irmo, SC �
12 Hodge Academy, Washington, GA�
13 Hot Springs Academy, Hot Springs, AK�
14 Ingleside/Ingleside-Fee Seminary, Burkeville, VA�
15 Irmo Church and Grade School, Irmo, SC
�
�16 Johnson C. Smith University (formerly
Biddle Institute), Charlotte, NC 1867
17 Kendall Institute, Sumter, SC �
18 Larimer High School, Edisto Island, SC �
19 Lincoln University, Lincoln, PA 1854�
20 Margaret Barber Seminary, Anniston, AL�
21 Mary Allen Junior College, Crockett, TX�
22 Mary Holmes Seminary, West Point, MS 1892�
23 Mary Potter-Redstone-Albion Academy,
Oxford, NC
24 McClelland Academy, Newman, GA�
25 Monticello Academy, Monticello, AK�
26 Mt. Nebo School, Lone Star, SC�
27 Nannie J. Gillespie-Selden Normal and
Industrial School, Cordele, GA
28 Newton Community Center, Chattanooga, TN�
29 Richard Allen Institute, Pine Bluff, AK�
30 Swift Memorial Junior School, Rogersville, TN�
Compiled by W. N. Hartshorn of Clifton, Massachusetts, in 1910, concerning the Clifton Conference, which took place from 1901 to 1908 to discuss educational and religious opportunities available to African Americans.
It celebrates the "religious, moral, and educational development of the American Negro since his emancipation."
--http://digital.ncdcr.gov/cdm/ref/colle
242 HBCUs by 1908
Alabama (36 institutions)
Arkansas (7 institutions)
Dist. of Columbia (2 institutions)
Florida (8 institutions)
Georgia (26 institutions)
Illinois (1 institution)
Kansas (1 institution)
Kentucky (11 institutions)
Louisiana (10 institutions)
Maryland (2 institutions)
Massachusetts (1 institution)
Mississippi (14 institutions)
Missouri (2 institutions)
New York (1 institution)
North Carolina (34 institutions)
Ohio (2 institutions)
Oklahoma (1 institution)
Pennsylvania (2 institutions)
South Carolina (28 institutions)
Tennessee (16 institutions)
Texas (11 institutions)
Virginia (23 institutions)
West Virginia (3 institutions)
The Normal School for Colored Girls opened in 1851, founded by Myrtilla Miner (1815-1864), while slavery was still legal in the District of Columbia
Early financial support came from Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, the prominent Quaker, as well as his cousin, Uncle Tom’s Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Dr. Gamaliel Bailey, editor of the abolitionist newspaper The National Era.
Miner, a white woman, wrote to a friend in 1852, "I love this school of mine profoundly, and have really no idea, when I am with them, that [my students] are not white, recognizing their spiritual more than their physical. Some, indeed many, spirits with whom I come in contact here seem far darker than they."
--UDC Digital Archives Collection
Miner fended off numerous attacks on the school, including stonings, arson, and physical threats, by learning how to shoot a revolver. Although often in frail health, Miner was a fierce advocate for her school. She was also an energetic fundraiser until 1860 and died in 1864.
Myrtilla Miner’s school was inactive for a lack of funds between 1860 and 1871.
A bill was considered in the U.S. Senate to incorporate the Institution for Colored Youth in Washington, D.C., Feb. 17, 1863. This institution incorporated in 1863.
D.C. Mayor Walter Lenox, in an article in the National Intelligencer, argued against the school, writing that it was not "humane to the colored population, for us to permit a degree of instruction so far beyond their political and social condition." He continued, "With this superior education there will come no removal of the present disabilities, no new sources of employment equal to their mental culture; and hence there will be a restless population, less disposed than ever to fill that position in society which is allotted to them."
In 1871, the Institution for the Education of Colored Youth sought the support of normal training in connection with Howard University, where a small normal department had existed since 1869. This helped revive the training of African American teachers in Washington, D. C.
--UDC Digital Archives Collection
The cooperative venture with Howard ended in 1875.
From the 1870s through World War II, Miner Teacher's College educated the majority of African American elementary school teachers employed by the D.C. schools.
According to historian Constance Green, the school offered "a better education than that available to most white children."
In 1929, an act of Congress accredited the school under the name Miner Teachers College.
It merged with the white teacher training school, Wilson Teachers College, in 1955, and changed its name to D.C. Teachers College.
That merged program was later incorporated with other institutions to form the University of the District of Columbia in 1976.
The Miner Building still serves as the School of Education at Howard University. A plaque on the front honors Myrtilla Miner.
--UDC Digital Archives Collection
Chartered in 1871, opened in 1875, under the notion that ‘All education should be for the glory of God.”
Northampton was settled in 1654, and religious fervor was quickened by the ministry of Jonathan Edwards, whose preaching sparked the religious revivals of the Great Awakening in the 1740s.
In 1885 noted Southern unapologist author George Washington Cable (1844-1925) moved to Northampton because his portrayal of racial issues in his novels made him unwelcome in his native New Orleans.
Smith history, papers of Seelye, etc.
Ethel and Helen’s Smith years, via family letters and texts
--Smith College Archives
--Smith College Archives
This link (http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/smitharchives/manosca138.html) will take you to finding aid for the Mary Augusta Jordan Papers located in the College Archives. The finding aid provides a brief biographical note on Jordan. If you see any file that you'd like further information on, let me know.
--Archivist Nanci Young nyoung@smith.edu
1896, fall Helen on choice of college, CWC 74
When Ethel and Helen began their senior year at Central High School, the important question was what college they would attend. Chesnutt had already decided that his children should have the best education that he could afford to give them.. The memory of his own circumscribed youth, of the many difficulties that he had experienced when as a young man in the South he had worked so tirelessly to get an education, had made him resolve that his children should have a good education no matter what sacrifices were involved.
1896, fall Helen on choice of college, CWC 75
Western Reserve University was first considered. It was a fine college; it was in Cleveland; the girls could live at home; the expense would be slight; most of their classmates were going there--such were the advantages set forth by their parents. But the girls objected. This last year at high school was a disappointment to them. They had not said anything about it because there was really nothing to be said. They were enjoying their lessons very much; they loved their teachers; their scholarship rating was high; yet they were not entirely happy. So, they said, they would rather go to Normal School and begin teaching as soon as possible, than to plod out to Reserve for another four years of drudgery.
This heresy was a shock to Charles. With the greatest delight he had watched his daughters studying at the dining room table under the green-shaded student lamp which he had bought for them. Absorbed in their studies and delighting in the solution of the difficult points in their homework, they had seemed to him a very happy pair; they literally had to be driven to bed if their work was not finished, for there was a rule that by nine-thirty the studying must be over, and by ten o’clock the children must be in bed. During the half hour between, they ate a little lunch, milk with crackers or cookies, and chattered with Susan and Charles about the events of the day. So this attitude on their part was a blow to Charles and Susan. They wanted their children to live wholesome normal lives, and here were their young daughters, suffering disillusion and defeat before they were out of high school. They decided to find out what was wrong, and they very soon did.
The girls told them that when the Senior Class was organized, and its activities under way, they realized with shock and confusion that they were considered different from their classmates; they were being gently but firmly set apart, and had become self-conscious about it. They knew that if they went to Reserve this state of affairs would continue, and so they had made their decision.
Charles learned that one of their friends had explained the situation to them. “After all,” she had said, “you are Negroes. We know that you are nice girls, and everybody thinks the world of you; but Mother says that while it was all right for us to go together when we were younger, now that we are growing up, we must consider Society, and we just can’t go together anymore.”
When this dear friend came a day or two later to study some homework with the girls, Susan told her not to come again because her mother might object. “O, no,” replied the girl. “Mother does not mind my studying with Ethel and Helen; it is only in social relations that she objects.” “Indeed!” replied Susan. “Well, I object very seriously to your coming here to study with my girls -so please don’t come again.”
Charles recalled his visit to Northampton several years before and, after discussing the matter with Susan, decided to send the girls to Smith College, where for four beautiful years they could breathe the air of New England, the cradle of democracy. When the decision was made, peace settled down upon the Chesnutt family….Susan was already planning the girls’ dresses for commencement, and their wardrobe for college….By February (of 1897) Chesnutt had written several stories and had made great progress on his novel. His shorthand business was very absorbing; his writing had to be done at night and on Sundays. He was making money and saving much of it, for he intended before long to give up business and devote himself entirely to literature. His plans however, must be postponed, for he realized that sending the girls to Smith would be far more expensive than sending them to Reserve.
Smith would be far more expensive than sending them to Reserve
1897 Smith College Circular:
Entrance exam p. 5
Smith tuition $100 per year, plus $5 for labs, plus $300 for off-campus housing p. 41,
plus $25-$50 for music lessons
Endowed scholarships of $100 and $50 p. 42, 43
1897/98 Western Reserve University's Catalogue lists the following expenses for
• tuition - $75/year
• matriculation fee - $5
• laboratory fees - $3-$5 per class
• room and board at Guilford House - $250-$400/year
Estimate of $405 plus travel and incidentals, or $500/year, v. $85/year with one lab class, or more than five times
as much
1897, summer Helen on preparation for college, CWC 79
The summer holiday of 1897 was spent at Linwood Park, Vermilion, Ohio, on Lake Erie, about thirty miles west of Cleveland. Susan had chosen the month of July for the vacation because she wanted to get the girls ready for college in August. There the children spent hours everyday in the lake or on the beach. Ned loved to swim, but the girls found it difficult. They all learned to row in the Vermilion River. They enjoyed the fun and excitement of bonfires on the beach at night with the other young people of the resort, while some adult told trilling stories to the group.
Charles, usually accompanied by a guest or two came up for the week-ends. Susan had taken the hired girl with her, for she wanted to be thoroughly rested before August when she must start to work on the girls’ wardrobes for college.
Freshman Ellen Hedican Duggan at 95 West Street, p 53
Freshman Florence Mary Homer at 95 West Street, p. 55
Freshman Edith Laurana Hurlburt at 95 West Street, p. 55
Freshman Mary Fosdick Jennings at 95 West Street, p. 55
Freshman Grace Theresa Osborne at 95 West Street, p. 57
Freshman Madelaine Guild Rogers at 95 West Street, p. 57
Freshman Sarah Barbour Webster at 95 West Street, p. 59
Sophomore Charlotte Eggleston at 95 West Sreet, p. 61
Sophomore Edna Louise Palmer at 95 West Street, p. 63
Sophomore Frances Mary White at 95 West Street, p. 65
On 1897 freshman student roll, living in campus housing at 95 West Street with 11 other students, p. 52 in class of 346 p. 76
FRESHMAN YEAR
1897-1898
Senior Myra Budlong Booth at 10 Green Street, p. 61
Sophomore Edna Hague Fawcett at 10 Green Street, p. 74
Sophomore Marguerite Gifford at 10 Green Street, p. 74
Sophomore Phebe Daisy Hastings at 10 Green Street, p. 74
Sophomore Sarah Cleonice Stone at 10 Green Street, p. 78
Freshman Adah Blackwell at 10 Green, p. 79
Freshman Lena Mae Bowen at 10 Green Street, p. 80
Freshman Laura Alice Brown at 10 Green Street, p. 80
Freshman Annie Amelia Cass at 10 Green Sreeet, p. 80
Freshman Helen Mary Darrin at 10 Green Street, p. 81
On 1898 sophomore student roll, living in campus housing at 10 Green Street with 17 other students, p. 72, 73 in class of 305, p. 89
Freshman Julia Harris Edson at 10 Green Street, p. 81
Freshman Harriet Sara Emmons at 10 Green Street, p. 81
Freshman Agnes Farrell at 10 Green Street, p. 81
Freshman Grace Evelyn Merrill at 10 Green Street, p. 84
Freshman Hulda Elizabeth Pettingill at 10 Green Street, p. 84
Freshman Alice Colbath Pickering at 10 Green Street, p. 84
Freshman Virginia Bell Tolar at 10 Green Street, p. 86
Junior Otelia Cromwell at 190 Round Hill in 1898-1899 with one other student,
p. 66 in class of 230, p. 71
Sophomore Inez Louise Wiggin at 190 Round Hill, p. 78 (from Warsaw, N.Y.)
SOPHOMORE YEAR
1898-1899
On 1899-1900 junior student roll, living in campus housing at 36 Green Street with no other students, p. 16 in class of 273,
p. 40
Senior Otelia Cromwell at 275 Main Street in 1899-1900 with no other students, p. 10
in class of 225, p. 15
Note that 1899-1900 is the only year that neither the Chesnutts nor Otelia Cromwell lived with other Smith students.
Otelia Cromwell’s class size dropped from 230 in junior year to 225 in senior year.
JUNIOR YEAR
1899-1900
On 1900-1901 senior student roll, living in campus housing at 30 Green Street with 12 other students, p. 93 in class of 258,
p. 100
Freshman Harriet Ryder Blumenthal at 30 Green Street, p. 71
Freshman Ellen Augusta Brackett at 30 Green Street, p. 71
Freshman Grace Elizabeth Haworth at 30 Green Street, p. 74
Freshman Lulu Broadbent Joslin at 30 Green Street, p. 75
Sophomore Theresa Rose Dervin at 30 Green Street, p. 81
Sophomore Laura Adelaide Mathews at 30 Green Street, p. 83
Sophomore Emily Packard at 30 Green Street, p. 84
Sophomore Estella Albra Wood at 30 Green Street, p. 86
Junior Catharine Elizabeth Brannick at 30 Green Street, p. 87
Junior Edith Lillian Claflin at 30 Green Street, p. 87
Junior Alice Dorothy Crulkshank at 30 Green Street, p. 87
Senior Edna Elizabeth Hammond at 30 Green Street, p. 94
The Chesnutts’ class size dropped from 346 in freshman year to 305 in sophomore year to 273 in junior year to 258 in senior year.
SENIOR YEAR
1900-1901
About 40 typical letters between parents and college students
Wanting children to do well in school
--Glad you are having a nice time, making friends and getting an education
--Glad to know that you and Ethel are enjoying yourselves, but I trust you will not forget
the serious side of it all
--My primary object in sending you up there, at some personal sacrifice on my part and
your mother’s I will assure you, was that you might seek the higher culture, both of
mind and heart
--Am pleased to know you are invited to join the Cleveland Club, and hope you will
enjoy it. You should, of course, join the athletic department, and learn how to play
shinny and baseball and prizefighting and fencing etc…..You
might also incidentally learn the meaning of the double-jointed Greek terms
on the map of the grounds indicating the orders of plants that grow there
--By the way, I believe you have said something about the library--it is a lovely one--and
Ethel in her last told us about the absence of honors and marks
--I gather from your letters that you are having a good time, which I am glad to learn. I
hope that by your diligence and good sense it may be but a prelude to a happy and
successful life. I am growing older every day, and have not yet realized my own
ambitions, so that a happy and successful future may depend largely upon
yourselves; hence the importance of making the best of your present opportunities
Money
--Keep me posted as to bills, etc. and I will remit accordingly
--Send me a memorandum of the amount necessary to clean off the slate and bring you
home for Christmas. I haven’t begun to draw any considerable revenue
from my writings yet, so do not touch me any harder than necessary
--In infer from looking at the calendar that you will soon be needing some money. Your
mother has ordered me to send seven dollars extra for hats. I enclose N.Y. draft
which I trust may cover the ground
--I think you labor under a misapprehension as to all the Cleveland girls there being the
daughters of rich parents; some of them I know are the daughters of
professional and business men who work as hard for what their daughters spend as
I do. Most of them, though are older men and are perhaps a bit farther ahead
--I make these suggestions because the letters I get seem to put the stress on these
external matters
Write home
-- Sometime or other, when you are thoroughly settled and all your wants are supplied
for an hour or two, you might drop me a word about what you are studying, and
what lectures you attend, and so on
What’s going on at home
--Your mother sends love and says that if you don’t need the new curtains send them
home for the side room upstairs
--I will keep you posted as to my literary movements….P.S. An elevator boy asked me
the other day if it was true that I was going into the “author business.” I told him
“Yes.”
--We have been having Home Week celebration; I send you a newspaper. Your mother
and I were down Tuesday evening to the theater, and took Dorothy down
Wednesday evening, Carnival night. Lots of light and noise and people; nothing particularly elevating, but quite exhilarating
--We had two-steps, waltzes, redowas, plain quadrilles, Dan Tucker and we finished up
with a cake-walk
--Have been reporting the Student Volunteer Movement Convention this week. It just
this minute occurred to me that I might have looked in on the New England
delegation and have seen if there was a delegate from Smith; but I didn’t think of it
in time
--I received your letters the other day and thank you for your congratulations. I am
writing this letter at home 1 p.m. Have been writing on Douglass Biog. all the
morning; it is going along swimmingly. Will read to a club at Willoughby next Friday
and at Emmanuel next Monday evening, Men’s Club. Am going to give a reading
at Washington later
Boyfriends and girlfriends
--Will and the other young man called last evening. I was not at home, but Dorothy and
Mama entertained them
--Ed Williams went away Sunday, I believe
--Glad to know you had such a gay time while Williams was there
1897, September 24 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 81
I got home Thursday night. Had a nice time in Boston. One of my stories will come out in the December or January number of the Atlantic, so the editor assures me. I saw the Shaw Memorial and the new Public Library building, which are “out of sight.”
I have read your letters to your mother. She is coming down-town today to get the stuff for the curtains. I think you had best buy a desk and sell it when you come away-unless you can buy one that some one else wants to sell. Let me know when your money runs out, for of course, I want to get you properly started off. I hope you are nicely settled and got properly registered and started on your work.
I was in time for the little dance Thursday night. It was rather tame; there was something missing; and I haven’t got accustomed to the house yet, it is so quiet and tidy.
Write me all the interesting things, and take care of yourselves, and be economical.
1897, September 30 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 81
I presume you received my letter containing $15.00 for desk, etc., and noted what I said about it. I am quite willing to see you properly started off, and have you keep up with the fair average standard of the place. Of course, you cannot compete in expenditures with the daughters of the rich, of whom I suppose are at least a few there. The expense account you send me is not bad; I shall expect you to keep up the custom.
… I send you herewith P.O. order for $15.00 to get the gymnasium suits; you might as well get them early. If you will find out the cost of sittings in the Episcopal church, I will send the money along to hold up the church’s “protecting and sheltering arms.” I might have attended to these things when I was there, but it is just as well for you to learn to transact your own business.
These letters are to you and Helen jointly; be good girls, be economical; remember that you are there not only to have fun but to study and prepare yourselves for your future usefulness. My regards to Miss King and her mother. Your mother, Dottie and Ned send love. I do not need to say let me hear from you often .
1898, November 24 Ethel Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 105
We received the check and thank you very much for it. Dear Miss Jordan is as lovely as ever. In class the other day she was talking about suffrage and the scandalous proceedings in North and South Carolina and different places South and West, and she felt very, very strongly on the subject and said this country couldn’t talk very much of justice and freedom and the “noble privilege of suffrage” (she did say that with such sarcasm) while such a shameful injustice went on. And she went on to say that in the South Negros were not only refused suffrage, but were kept form trades and getting into employment by Trade Unions and such things; and in Georgia now the people are clamoring for the reduction of the amount allowed for educational purposes to the Negroes; and then they blame the Negroes when they do not always succeed in getting along well and advancing toward the higher paths of life. She said a great many very true things; I think she is an admirable woman. She read one of my themes out in class the other day as a very good theme. I love college more and more each day, and Miss Jordan also.
(October 1898-April 1899 racial violence, including in Wilmington, N.C., that spurred The Marrow of Tradition)
(Mary Augusta Jordan, A.M., professor of rhetoric and old English)
1899, spring _Susan Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 106
I have other paper in the house, but it is upstairs, and I am too lame to go up and down very often, so I think you will not mind my writing on this. I was out yesterday for the first time in two weeks. Edwin’s shoes had given out and I had to go downtown with him to get another pair, as his father is too busy now to think of things of that kind. His assistant, Mrs. Jones is in very uncertain health and can’t be depended on just now, so it keeps your father anxious and overworked. I am glad that he gets so much encouragement in his literary work as that keeps his spirits up, and helps him to slave along without thinking too much about it. I am only sorry that he did not get this encouragement ten years ago.
1899, spring _Ethel and Helen Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 107
This letter set the girls to worrying about their father. The fact that his expenses were so heavy that they kept him slaving along, as Susan expressed it, convinced them that they had been unfair to him in coming to Smith. So they wrote offering to leave at the end of the year and continue their education at Western Reserve University.
1899, spring Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 107
Charles answered them at once telling them that it was very dutiful and considerate of them to make such a proposal, but that he was quite able to keep them at Smith and was in no sense overweighted by the burden.
1899, Easter vac. Helen of family’s reaction to Charles’s success, CWC 110
After the publication of The Conjure Woman the Chesnutts were so happy that they had to celebrate in some way. Charles persuaded Susan and her three daughters to spend the Easter vacation in Washington with the Tysons (Susan’s sister Jane Tyson and her husband), who have been urging them to come.
1899, Easter vac. Ethel and Helen Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 110
The girls wrote glowing letters home to him telling him about all the wonderful experiences they were having sightseeing and meeting interesting people. They thought Washington the most wonderful and beautiful city imaginable, a fit capital for their glorious country. Charles was delighted with their transports and hope that disillusionment would not come too soon. Then they returned to Northampton and spent a delightful spring term reading the notices about the book that their father sent them, and pouring over the magazines in the Forbes Library which contained articles about him.
1899, May 26 Ethel Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 111
We received your nice letter and the newspaper with the article about you in it. Thank you very much; it was a very interesting account of your life and gave your own daughters new information about you and their grandmother. Cleveland is acting nicely, as it ought to, by you. We are very glad about the story the Century has accepted. The Conjure Woman is in the Forbes Library here; I do not know who asked for it. We thought we would, then decided it would be nicer if someone else did, because we were sure someone else would. Our own copy is being eagerly read; everyone admires the book greatly.
1899, June 1 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 111
...If you have the Bookman in the library there, you will find in it this month about five columns devoted to me and The Conjure Woman with a portrait--two and more columns of personal notice and as much more of review. Look also in the Book Buyer for a good portrait of yours truly. Will have lots of pleasant things to tell you when you return.
Let me know when you need funds, and how much.
1899, October 12 Susan Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 119
…Your father is fairly started in his literary work. He has finished the Douglass biography, and is now busy reading the proof-sheets for his new book. So far he has had very little time to get lonesome, I am hoping he will keep busy. I have given up the parlor to him; he has his desk and table and typewriter in there. By taking some of the chairs out he has plenty of room. I use the sitting-room for my friends. We have a telephone in the house. It was put in yesterday--in the dining-room….
1899, November 12 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 122 - part 1 of 2
I am going to Washington some time this week to give a reading there Friday night, and I may not be back until the last of next week, I send you herewith N. Y. draft for, I believe, the usual amount.
Glad to know you had a pleasant time Hallowe’en. The characters, Simple Simon and Mother Goose, taken by you and Helen seem quite appropriate, and we are not surprised that you took the prize. Save the pictures.
1899, December 10 Helen Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 125
We received your books this week and they are fine. Henrietta Brown sat down and read The Wife of His Youth steadily until she finished it. She says that it is the first book that has caused her to give up everything else for many a day. I don’t care much for the binding, but I suppose the publishers know what they are doing. The illustrations are good, very good except the first one. I never cared for that. I think it will be a grand success, and so do the other girls who have read it.
The Douglass book is very sweet indeed; your style is perfect. The preface is very nice. We take literature this year and are capable of judging.
What are you doing now? Are you still working on Rena? We shall be home in ten days. There are to be no cut rates. You will receive a letter in a day or two on finances. Love to all.
(Senior Henrietta Thompson Brown from Buffalo, N.Y., living at 30 Green Street)
1900, January 26 Susan Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 139
...We went to hear Paderewski last night. We had to pay a good price for seats, but it was worth the price. He played at the Gray’s Armory; all reserved seats were two dollars, general admission was one dollar, and that immense place was simply packed. It was a fearful night, “it snowed and blowed”, and was very cold, but that did not keep people away. Every note was as distinct and clear as a bell. He played over two hours, leaving the stage only once for a few minutes. It was fine playing, and it was a fine and appreciative audience that greeted him.
I have been out every evening this week except one. So I manage to lead quite a busy life. I daresay Papa told you about the reception which was tendered us at Dr. Jewette’s on Cedar Avenue. Love to you both.
1900, February 4 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 140
It was my firm intention to visit you on this trip East, but you want me to make the best impression when I come, and I left home about ten days sooner than expected, so that I didn’t have time to get some “glad rags” that I intended to wear to impress my “distinguished personality” upon your under-graduate friends and to do you proper credit. Besides I have promised to send in the MS. of a certain novel in the shortest time possible, and in order to get it in on time, I must hustle it--and I wouldn’t want to come to you unless I could stay at least a day.
Must hurry home for another reason--to send that tuition money. Will leave here for Cleveland in just one hour and will be there 9:30 tomorrow a.m. I want to visit you when I can take my time and enjoy it. I will let you know.
1900 March Helen on Dorothy coming to visit her and Ethel at Smith, CWC 144
Chesnutt had arranged to return East early in March to give some readings and lectures in
Boston and vicinity. When the girls at Smith learned of their father’s plans they asked him to bring
Dorothy and leave them with her for a little visit. Susan at first refused to allow her to go--she thought
it utter nonsense for Charles to burden himself with the care of a little girl when he was going to be
so busy in his own affairs, but Dorothy and Charles finally overcame her objections.
1900, March 15 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 145
I am thinking of coming up to Northampton Saturday morning and staying over Sunday,
as I have some engagements here the first of next week. I suppose you are well, although your
silence is equally compatible with death or disability.
I wired your mother to express me a certain pair of shoes to Northampton. Keep them
for me--they are not for your wear--I want something for myself.
I hope the infant is enjoying herself. I may not be able to go home before the 28th and
I expect the matter will become dolorosa before she sees her pickaninny again. Much love to
my three girls.
Dorothy Chesnutt in 1897, age 7
1900, October 12 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 153
Your interesting letters have been received from time to time. Am sincerely glad to know that you find the house life so pleasant and that the young ladies are all so harmonious and agreeable. Have read with much interest the clipping sent, giving account of the 25th anniversary exercises, which were very interesting. Am pleased to know that you saw Mr. Chamberlin and Angel; she is a queer girl, but I imagine has quality; at least Chamberlin thinks so, and as I value his opinion concerning myself, which should I question it concerning his protégée? Hein?
We were invited to call on my friends, the Amblers several evenings ago, to meet a Mr. Caverno and wife, who were visiting there. One of their daughters is an instructor in Greek at Smith--I guess I have heard you speak of her--and another teaches in the Burnham School. They expressed their intention of looking you up or of hoping to see you at Northampton, whither they are bound by slow stages. I hope you may meet them, as they are very nice people. Mr. Caverno writes, along philosophic and similar lines, for the serious magazines, and is, I imagine, a retired minister.
We were placed to learn from a recent letter, that Ethel and her young man had composed their differences; it is well enough not to have any. He has been around several times lately.
.... Have also finished reading the proofs of The House Behind the Cedars, which has been improved by the process. I see it advertised as containing “a bold plot, developed with much force, and elaborating a sociological problem of great significance.”
1900, November 6 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Helen Chesnutt, CWC 154 - part 1 of 2
Your interesting letter came duly in hand; I also saw the one written to your mother, giving an account of certain “high jinks” on which I forbear to speak, with a silence more eloquent than words.
The reviews of the new book are coming in and are very favorable. I mailed you a copy of the Plain Dealer yesterday, with the first review I had seen, although I have received several since, all favorable. Mr. Chamberlin has an excellent one in last Wednesday’s Transcript. The P.D. says I have written a “story of absorbing interest and treated a perplexing problem with masterly ability.” If this keeps up, the book will be a genuine success, and my next book a howling success. Several big houses have been after it already. This book ought to make an impression, and I have no sort of doubt it will.
I do not, however, expect to get rich out of it, and I therefore, have not sent a great deal extra in the check I enclose herewith. I’m afraid your are “spread”-ing too much. I guess you can worry along with this awhile….
---------------------------------------------------
1900, November 6 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Helen Chesnutt, CWC 154 - part 1 of 2
Your interesting letter came duly in hand; I also saw the one written to your mother, giving an account of certain “high jinks” on which I forbear to speak, with a silence more eloquent than words. (This was senior year, the year after Otelia was gone, and the year after the Black students lived with no other students.)
1901 Helen on Tuskegee, CWC 159
From Wilmington he went to Tuskegee as the guest of Dr. and Mrs. Booker T. Washington. Chesnutt was very much impressed with Tuskegee and with the people whom Washington had gathered about him. The annual Tuskegee Conference, which was held in February of each year for the benefit of the Negro farmers of the district, was in session, and he realized for the first time what really great work Washington was doing for the Negroes of the Black belt. This conference was among Booker T. Washington’s most important projects at Tuskegee. Then and in years to come Chesnutt criticised Washington’s philosophy very strongly, but he never underestimated the greatness of the work he was doing for the Negroes in the South.
1901 Helen on her and Ethel’s plans for after graduation, CWC 163
His two daughters at Smith now were in their senior year and had developed a great deal of initiative and independence. They were looking out for their own future and had written to both Tuskegee and Washington, D.C., about teaching positions for the following year.
Ethel was engaged to be married to Edward C. Williams, Librarian of Western Reserve University, and the wedding was to take place after her graduation from Smith. Charles’s dearest hope was to have Helen teach in one of the Cleveland high schools, Central High if possible. He was therefore very much surprised when he found both girls wanted to leave Cleveland and teach in the South. He promptly went down to the Board of Education to see what chance Helen would have to teach in high schools, and sent the following letter to her:
1901, January 29 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Helen Chesnutt, CWC 163
Your interesting, vivacious and business-like note came duly to hand, and it gives me much pleasure to note the energy and foresight with which you are looking out for the future. I trust you and Ethel have passed your examination with satisfaction to yourselves and your teachers.
I have paid a visit to Superintendent Jones, apropos of your future employment. The case seems to stand about like this:
You can get into the grammar schools in Cleveland by going through the Normal School for two terms of thirty weeks, after which you will probably be able to substitute the remainder of the year. If you then wish to teach in the grammar schools, you can start on a salary of $475.00 a year, being $50.00 more than the mere high and normal graduate gets; in other words, your college education will enable you to start at $50.00 per year more.
For the High School, the rule is, four or five years experience before one can get in the high schools. If one does not care to go through Normal, this experience is best acquired in high schools in small towns, which counts in qualifying for high school positions here. I am told that the best time to apply for such positions is in March or April. If they were applied for now, the application might be forgotten or mislaid. These high schools are glad to get college graduates; they pay $40.00 or $50.00 a month.
Of course, all these rules are more or less subject to modification in case of great ability or demonstrated success. But success can be demonstrated only through experience somewhere.
I mean to visit Tuskegee in a couple of weeks; shall leave here sometime next week. I shall also visit Washington, and will look around in your behalf. I am afraid we can’t get you definitely disposed of for a month or so yet, but you have so many lines out that we may be able to land something.
As to Ethel’s case, I don’t quite understand its status; but the same principles apply, if she should wish to teach.
1901 Susan Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 164
We had a surprise this morning, Helen walked in at breakfast time. Says the doctor advised her to come home and take absolute rest for at least three weeks on account of her eyes. That means a lengthy bill at Dr. Baker’s.
I am afraid she had strained her eyes severely studying astronomy which she ought never to have taken up. I fear they are in a bad way now, but we have decided to say that she is run down and has been advised to stop for a while. She will find it hard work to get a position if it is known that she is having so much trouble with her eyes.
1901 Helen on Charles’s wish for her to teach in Cleveland, CWC 164
After three weeks’ rest Helen returned to college, and a few days later received a letter from her father telling her that he wanted her to teach in Cleveland; that he would be very much disappointed if she did not give up her idea of going to Washington. He wanted her to attend the Cleveland Normal School and ultimately to teach at Central High School. Mr. Harris had promised to give her substitute work and to help her get into Central at the earliest opportunity.
1901, March 17 Helen Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 164
I don’t understand your attitude in this school-teaching business at all. We have counted on freeing you from the burdens of our support as soon as we left college, so this idea on your part comes as a shock. You and Mama are always talking about the need of saving money and economizing; therefore I do not see the sense of your undertaking to support me for another year. The actual outlay for my board etc. would be very little, but by being in Washington I might be earning $600 or $700.…
As for your position in Cleveland, it has never had the slightest influence on my situation, and has never been of any advantage to me….
I am not comfortable in Cleveland and never was, and I have always vowed that I would not settle down in that city….And now you ask me to return and go to the Normal School! I can’t imagine anything more distasteful. I tell you all this because I want you to know exactly where I stand in this matter.
But since you do not wish me to go South and become independent, and since your heart is set on my going to Normal School, I will return to Cleveland and go to Normal School. But it will be on your own head if I don’t get all these golden positions that are standing around waiting for me, according to Professor Harris. As for his advice about the South-he is a snob and always has been, and I don’t care a snap about him and his advice.
Will you please write to Uncle Clay and tell him that you have arranged that I am to stay in Cleveland next year, and thank him for the trouble he has taken about the position in Washington. I think that you ought to explain to him that I am not backing out. I suppose everyone will call me shiftless and worthless because after “this expensive education,” as they say, I come back home and tag out to Normal.
Ethel will write to you herself. She, of course, would not dream of going to Normal School, and teaching in Cleveland; so as you say “it seems to be up to me” to do it. Well, I have stood a lot more than people give me credit for, and a few more blows won’t materially affect my ultimate good. You will of course write to Uncle Clay.
I suppose that I shall be happier about this when I get settled at Normal, but now it seems very dreary. Much love to you.
1901 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Helen Chesnutt, CWC 165
Your letter came this morning. I am sorry my letter should have given you a shock. I trust it has not affected you seriously.
Perhaps in my thoughts about the matter, I did not place stress enough upon the question of your situation in Cleveland, which you have stated tersely, vigorously, and I must admit, correctly, so far as I can see. I do not see, either, that time will materially modify the situation.
True, here you would have steady employment, and I might, if proper pressure were brought to bear upon me, find a more commodious house to live in. But I do not see how you could avoid the Normal School. If you have always meant never to settle down here, it would of course be wasting time to go through so distasteful a mill. My heart is not at all set on the matter. I am quite willing you should be independent; I have not objection to your living where you can see some young people, and possibly meet some young man whom you would like well enough to marry.
I rather expected that you would have written to Washington by this time and filed your application. Go on and do so if you prefer, as I imagine you do. I do not pin any faith to Mr. Harris, in view of what Mr. Jones said, and there is no doubt about your having to enter the graded school before you can get into the High School, and if you should change your mind about Cleveland, your Washington experience would count. If you should not like it at Washington, a year will roll by quickly enough, and you will have money in your purse. You won’t be part of the people in Washington, but you will be part of a people, which is more than you would be here.
So you had better file your application, and file it right away, as there may be others ahead, If you don’t get your appointment you still have Cleveland to fall back upon, We shall see you several times a year, and in summer anyway.
As to Ethel the affair is not so urgent, and I will write her, or wait until she writes me. I don’t say she can’t go to Tuskegee--but we will write about it.
Your Mother agrees with me that we are solely animated by a desire for your happiness, and that in this respect your feelings are a very important matter to
be considered, if not the controlling matter. We are quite willing that you should do as you like All are well and send love.
1901 Ethel Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 166
Helen is in a frightful state; she has had headaches nearly every day lately, and today she is in despair. If you want your Helen a total nervous wreck, just keep on in the way you are going. She is to proud, too ambitious, to act sensibly. She cannot keep on with the work; every time she does anything of any consequence she collapses with one of the headaches. It is criminal for her to try it; Baker ought never to have let her come back, with her eyes in the condition they are. She has got to stop and that immediately. She has got to rest, for a year or more. And Normal School, Washington, study or teaching of any kind are out of the question. She is so young that there is no need of her rushing any more, and a total cessation of all eye work is absolutely necessary. I don’t think she had much rest at home. The girl is on the verge of nervous prostration and no one seems to realize it. At home you are all under a fearful nervous strain all the time; you do too many unnecessary things and you talk and discuss too much, and Helen has got to rest somewhere. She has got to stop, and future questions can be settled at future times; if she comes home she must not be troubled with questions as to what she shall do in the future. She is not fit to do anything now. If the house at home is to be filled with company all summer, it is no place for Helen. I know you told her she ought to stay out and come back next year but she hadn’t wisdom enough to do it. Please try to realize these things. She cannot keep on at college present. Helen Chesnutt needs complete rest of mind and eyes for a long time and I propose to step in now, and see that she gets it. Pride and ambition are all right within certain limits but I don’t want them to kill or ruin Helen. I should imagine from all I hear of you that you had better call a halt on yourself too, or you will collapse. No matter how much will, ambition, pride you have, you can’t strain Nature very long; something will smash somewhere and you are living too strenuously. We all need a little more practical sense about us, and less emotion and feeling. I hope you are recovering from your Southern trip. Much love to you.
1901, March 25 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 167
Your very positive and commanding letter of several days since sent cold chills up and down my spine, and paralyzed me so that I have only just recovered. I am deeply concerned to hear of Helen’s terrible plight, but hope it may prove to be not quite so bad as it seemed to you at last writing. I understand your mother has written you. I called on Dr. Baker on Saturday, the day after receiving your letter, and after waiting two hours had a talk with him. He has an idea that by taking it easy and not worrying Helen ought to be able, so far as he can see, to pull through the school year. Possibly by the time she comes back from Boston, where she ought to try to be moderately quiet and take care of herself, she may feel in better shape. If not it will be time enough then to take up the question of her immediate future. All dangers are not death. I think I have heard you speak of a girl who is almost blind who has taken her course right along. This momentary affliction of Helen’s might give you an opportunity for a little self-sacrifice in the way of helping her; it might work for your own soul’s good.
I quite agree with you that we all lead too strenuous a life, and that we ought to let up a little. It is not all necessary for either of you to worry yourselves to death about what you shall do next year, which I suspect is the source of most of Helen’s troubles. If she chooses to file that Washington application she would not be bound by it--she could resign in advance, if necessary; there will be plenty of others ready to take her place. Or if her health requires it, she can stay out as long an necessary. I imagine I can support her a while without eleemosynary aid. What she would have to expect in either place you both know; but we have lived quite a while, and with a little philosophy and a little less strenuousness we can worry along almost anywhere.
With regard to your going to Tuskegee you had better write your views. I see the South with the chastened eye of experience; it may look very different though the rosy spectacles of youth, to one who has never seen it. You are a young too and have I trust, a long life before you, of which a year or two, here or there, under conditions at all tolerable, would not be missed. I should like to see you happily married, had
indeed rather expected it, but that is a thing which I cannot control. It is natural, perhaps, that you would like a little liberty before being tied down.
Write to me again, some more strong, vigorous letters, and we will work all these things out. You have a couple of weeks’ vacation, which out to have a good effect if employed judiciously. All are well.
1901 Helen on Easter 1901 in Boston with college mates and other friends, CWC 168-169
Helen returned home after the Easter vacation which the girls had spent in Boston and vicinity visiting their college mates and other friends. She had been granted permission to be graduated with her class but would have to return in March of the following year to compete her work and receive her degree.
1901, June Helen on Smith graduation, CWC 171
In June, Susan, Charles, and Dorothy went to Northampton to see the girls graduated. They returned in time for Edwin’s graduation from Central High School….
Paradise pond
--Smith College Library
Ethel and Helen’s accomplishments after Smith
From Charles Chesnutt bio in
1919 National Cyclopedia of the Colored Race, Vol. 1, P. 347
...Two of his daughters are graduates of Smith College and another graduated from the College for Women of Western Reserve University.
One of his daughters, Mrs. Ethel C. Williams, is the wife of Professor Edward C. Williams, of Howard University; another, Miss Helen Chestnut, is a teacher in Central High School, Cleveland, and the third, Miss Dorothy Chestnut, is a teacher in the Cleveland Public schools....
...His only son is a graduate of Harvard University, studied dentistry in Northwestern University, Chicago and is practicing his profession in Chicago...
------------------------------
A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870-1930
1879: In April, Ethel P. Chesnutt is born to Charles W. Chesnutt and Susan
(Perry) Chesnutt.
1893: Ethel enters Central High School.
1897: In June, she graduates from Central High School. In the fall, Ethel
begins studies at Smith College in Northampton, MA.
1901: Ethel graduates from Smith College in June and becomes an
instructor at Tuskegee Institute.
1902: In November, she quits Tuskegee and returns to Cleveland, where she
marries Edward Christopher Williams, known as an author and the
first African American professional librarian, serving at Western
Reserve and Howard universities.
Ethel Perry Chesnutt Williams (1879-1962?) and husband Edward Christopher Williams, known as an author and the first African American professional librarian, married in 1902. Williams was valedictorian of his class at Adelbert College (Western Reserve University), a member of Phi Beta Kappa, librarian of Hatch Library at Western Reserve, principal of
M Street High School in Washington, D. C., and librarian of Howard University.
Edward C. Williams, Class of 1892. One of the most accomplished scholars to matriculate at Case Western Reserve University, Edward Christoper Williams was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1871. He graduated from Adelbert College in 1892 as valedictorian of his class and member of the Phi Beta Kappa national honor society. He was one of the society's six African American members. As a student, he also held the Ohio Conference Championship for mile runner.
--African American Scholars at Case
Upon graduation, Mr. Williams accepted the first Assistant Librarian position at Western Reserve University's Hatch Library. Two years later (1898), he not only assumed the directorship of the Library, but also took sabbatical in order to attend the New York State Library School in Albany. After completing the two-year Master's Degree program in only one year, Mr. Williams returned to the University. He initially prepared the organizational plan of the Library School and, when the School was established in 1904, taught courses in Reference Work, Bibliography, Public Documents, and Book Selection. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Mr. Williams was a founding member of the Ohio Library Association (OLA) and lectured at the Ohio Institute of Library workers, which
held its annual meetings each year at OLA.
In 1909, for reasons not clearly documented, Mr. Williams left his position at Western Reserve University and became principal of a high school in Washington, D.C. Not content as a school administrator, in 1916 Mr. Williams became Librarian at Howard University in Washington, D.C. There, he established the Library School and also taught German, Italian, and French in the Department of Romance Languages. In 1924, Mr. Williams became head of the Department. Versatile and multi-talented, Mr. Williams was also a classical drama playwriter and received a Julius Rosenwald fellowhip in 1929 to study for a Ph.D at Columbia University. He died on December 24, 1929 while working on his degree.
1903: In October, birth of her son, Charles Waddell Chesnutt Williams, who
later became a lawyer and died before completing a biography of
his father. (Where is the uncompleted biography of Edward
1906: Represented Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical School at the 25th
anniversary celebration of Tuskegee Institute.
1929: December 24, husband dies at Freedmen’s hospital in Washington,
D.C., while on faculty at Howard University and working on Ph.D.
at Columbia University.
1932: Received telegram(s) regarding her father’s death.
1952: Book Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line is
in part dedicated to Ethel, p. vi
Last but by no means least, I owe warmest thanks to my two
sisters, Ethel and Dorothy, for their encouragement and
co-operation….
--Helen M. Chesnutt, Feb. 14, 1952, in Charles
Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line, p. vi
1962?: Ethel dies
1899, November 2 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Edward C. Williams, CWC 121
1899, December 5 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Edward C. Williams, CWC 124
1900, February 27 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Edward C. Williams, CWC 142
1900, March 4 Edward C. Williams to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 143
1900, April 28 Edward C. Williams to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 148
1900, May 12 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Edward C. Williams, CWC 148
1901, October 26 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, TBA 164
1901, October 29 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 175
1902 Helen on Ethel’s early career, CWC 183
1902 Helen on Ethel’s resignation from Tuskegee to marry Edward, CWC 184
1902 Helen on Charles’s thoughts about Booker T. Washington/ Tuskegee, CWC 191
1903, June 27 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, CWC 193
1903, August 11 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, CWC 194
1881: In December, Helen M. Chesnutt is born to Charles W. Chesnutt and
Susan (Perry) Chesnutt.
1893: Helen enters Central High School.
1897: In June, Helen graduates from Central High School and in fall enters
Smith College.
1901: Helen graduates from Smith College in June
1902: Helen goes to Baltimore to teach. Then she begins substituting in
Cleveland public schools. When she teaches Latin at Central High
School, one of her students is Langston Hughes.
1912: Helen tours Europe with her father.
1902 Helen on her early career, CWC 183
1902 Helen on her move from Baltimore to Cleveland, CWC 184
1902 Helen on Chesnutts’ new house and Cleveland life, CWC 184-190
1921: In the summer, she begins to teach Latin at the Foreign Language
School at Western Reserve University.
1925: Helen receives her M.A. at Columbia University.
1927: In November, she suffers a ruptured appendix followed by peritonitis.
1952: Book Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line is published.
1969: Helen M. Chesnutt dies at age 88.
The 14-room house into which the Charles Chesnutt family moved in 1904 at 1668 (later renumbered 9719) Lamont Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio. Charles lived there for 28 years until his death in 1932. The family moved out in 1936 and the house, situated on a lot 300 feet deep by 70 feet wide, was torn down when the Charles Orr School was built on the site. Charles W. Chesnutt School is on E. 71 & Kinsman.
Helen Chesnutt in 1958 at the Cleveland Public Library, which holds a collection of Charles Chesnutt materials, in front of the Charles Chesnutt exhibit.
Because of Helen Chesnutt’s meticulous curatorial care and dissemination of her father’s papers, we know much about the life of late-nineteenth century/turn-of-the-twentieth century race writer Charles Chesnutt, including the lives of his two daughters who were the first known Black students at Smith College.
Additional slides
1896, fall Helen on choice of college, CWC 74-76
1897, summer Helen on preparation for college, CWC 79
1897, September 24 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 81
1897, September 30 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 81
1897, October 13 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Helen Chesnutt, CWC 82
1898, January 14 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 89
1898, January 31 Susan Chesnutt to Helen Chesnutt, CWC 89
1898, February 8 Susan Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 89
1898, February 28 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 90
1898, March 14 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 90
1898, August 5 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to George Washington Cable, TBA 111
1898, August 11 George Washington Cable to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, TBA 112
1898, November 24 Ethel Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 105
1899, spring Susan Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 106
Ethel and Helen Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 107
Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 107
1899, Easter vac. Helen of family’s reaction to Charles’s success, CWC 110
Ethel and Helen Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 110
1899, May 26 Ethel Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 111
1899, June 1 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 111
1899, October 2 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 118
1899, October 12 Susan Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 119
1899, November 12 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 122
1899, December 8 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 125
1899, December 10 Helen Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 125
1899, December 15 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 132
1899-1900 Helen on reviews of The Wife of His Youth, CWC 134-136
1900, January 26 Susan Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 139
1900, February 3 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Susan Chesnutt, CWC 140
1900, February 4 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 140
1900, February 24 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, TBA 144
1900, March 3 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 143
1900 March Helen on Dorothy coming to visit her and Ethel at Smith, CWC 144
1900, March 10 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Susan Chesnutt, CWC 144
1900, March 14 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Susan Chesnutt, CWC 145
1900, March 15 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 145
1900, March 24 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 146
1900, March 25 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Helen Chesnutt, CWC 146
1900, April 30 Susan Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 148
1900, September 28 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 153
1900, October 12 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 153
1900, October 29 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 154
1900, November 6 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Helen Chesnutt, CWC 154
1901 Helen on Tuskegee, CWC 159
1901 Helen on her and Ethel’s plans for after graduation, CWC 163
1901, January 29 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Helen Chesnutt, CWC 163
1901 Helen on her illness at Smith, CWC 164
1901 Susan Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 164
1901 Helen on Charles’s wish for her to teach in Cleveland, CWC 164
1901, March 17 Helen Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 164
1901 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Helen Chesnutt, CWC 165
1901 Ethel Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 166
1901, March 25 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 167
1901 Helen on Easter 1901 in Boston with college mates and other friends, CWC 168-169
1901, June Helen on Smith graduation, CWC 171
Freshman year 1897/1898
1896, fall Helen on choice of college, CWC 74-76
1897, summer Helen on preparation for college, CWC 79
1897, September 24 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 81
1897, September 30 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 81
1897, October 13 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Helen Chesnutt, CWC 82
1898, January 14 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 89
1898, January 31 Susan Chesnutt to Helen Chesnutt, CWC 89
1898, February 8 Susan Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 89
1898, February 28 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 90
1898, March 14 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 90
Summer 1898
1898, August 5 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to George Washington Cable, TBA 111
1898, August 11 George Washington Cable to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, TBA 112
1898, August 5
Charles Waddell Chesnutt to George Washington Cable
To Be an Author: Letters of Charles W. Chesnutt 1889-1905, p. 111
My daughters were much improved by their year at Smith, and will return next month. They had hoped to get on the campus, but the nearest they could come to it was Stone House, which I understand is a very nice place.
1898, August 11
George Washington Cable to Charles Waddell Chesnutt
To Be an Author: Letters of Charles W. Chesnutt 1889-1905, p. 112
We did not pay your daughters as much attention as we should have liked to do, last season, I being away so much and Mrs. Cable not well. I hope we shall see more of them this year.
Sophomore year 1898/1899
1898, November 24 Ethel Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 105
1899, spring Susan Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 106
Ethel and Helen Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 107
Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 107
1899, Easter vac. Helen of family’s reaction to Charles’s success, CWC 110
Ethel and Helen Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 110
1899, May 26 Ethel Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 111
1899, June 1 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 111
Norrell, Robert J. Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009.
p. 161-163 The October 1898-April 1899 racial violence, including in NC, that spurred Marrow of Tradition
Dray, Philip. At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America. New York: PUBLISHER, 2002.
p. 3-15
Oct. 13, 1898, New York Times 10 Black coal miner strikebreakers killed in Virden, Illinois
Summer 1899
Junior year 1899/1900
1899, October 2 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 118
1899, October 12 Susan Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 119
1899, November 12 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 122
1899, December 8 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 125
1899, December 10 Helen Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 125
1899, December 15 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 132
1899-1900 Helen on reviews of The Wife of His Youth, CWC 134-136
1900, January 26 Susan Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 139
1900, February 3 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Susan Chesnutt, CWC 140
1900, February 4 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 140
1900, February 24 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, TBA 144
1900, March 3 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 143
1900 March Helen on Dorothy coming to visit her and Ethel at Smith, CWC 144
1900, March 10 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Susan Chesnutt, CWC 144
1900, March 14 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Susan Chesnutt, CWC 145
1900, March 15 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 145
1900, March 24 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 146
1900, March 25 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Helen Chesnutt, CWC 146
1900, April 30 Susan Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 148
Dorothy Chesnutt in 1897, age 7.
Summer 1900
Summer spent in a rented house at Willoughby, east of Cleveland
future son-in-law Edward C. Williams
Senior year 1900/1901
1900, September 28 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 153
1900, October 12 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 153
1900, October 29 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, CWC 154
1900, November 6 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Helen Chesnutt, CWC 154
1901 Helen on Tuskegee, CWC 159
1901 Helen on her and Ethel’s plans for after graduation, CWC 163
1901, January 29 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Helen Chesnutt, CWC 163
1901 Helen on her illness at Smith, CWC 164
1901 Susan Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 164
1901 Helen on Charles’s wish for her to teach in Cleveland, CWC 164
1901, March 17 Helen Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 164
1901 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Helen Chesnutt, CWC 165
1901 Ethel Chesnutt to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 166
1901, March 25 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 167
1901 Helen on Easter 1901 in Boston with college mates and other friends, CWC 168-169
1901, June Helen on Smith graduation, CWC 171
Freshman year 1897/1898
Summer 1898
Sophomore year 1898/1899
Summer 1899
Junior year 1899/1900
Summer 1900
Summer spent in a rented house at Willoughby, east of Cleveland
future son-in-law Edward C. Williams
Senior year 1900/1901
Freshman year 1897/1898
Summer 1898
Sophomore year 1898/1899
Summer 1899
Junior year 1899/1900
Summer 1900
Summer spent in a rented house at Willoughby, east of Cleveland
future son-in-law Edward C. Williams
Senior year 1900/1901
1900, February 24
Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington
To Be an Author: Letters of Charles W. Chesnutt 1889-1905, p. 144
I am in receipt of your favor acknowledging my reviews of your book. It was very kind of you to write, for so many good things are said of you that they are no novelty. I am glad to add my weak voice to the chorus.
I also have your letter requesting copies of my books for the Tuskegee library. I have ordered The Conjure Woman and The Wife of His Youth sent to you, and will see that you get the other,--the life of Frederick Douglass. A visit to Tuskegee at some time in the future is one of the pleasures to which I look forward. I have met a number of gentlemen who have been there, and they all agree upon the wonderful results accomplished by your labors.
1901, October 26
Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt
To Be an Author: Letters of Charles W. Chesnutt 1889-1905, p. 164
I am sending you by mail to-day
Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line, p.
--Smith College Library
Commencement speakers
https://www.smith.edu/about-smith/smith-history/commencement-speakers
Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850–1954 : An Intellectual History
By Stephanie Y. Evans
Published in print: 2008 Published Online: September 2011 ISBN: 9780813032689 eISBN: 9780813039299 Item type: book Publisher: University Press of Florida DOI: 10.5744/florida/9780813032689.001.0001
This book chronicles the stories of African American women who struggled for and won access to formal education, beginning in 1850, when Lucy Stanton, a student at Oberlin College, earned the first college diploma conferred on an African American woman. In the century between the Civil War and the civil rights movement, a critical increase in Black women's educational attainment mirrored unprecedented Page 2 of 4 national growth in American education. The author reveals how Black women demanded space as students and asserted their voices as educators — despite such barriers as violence, discrimination, and oppressive campus policies — contributing in significant ways to higher education in the United States. She argues that their experiences, ideas, and practices can inspire contemporary educators to create an intellectual democracy in which all people have a voice. Profiles include Anna Julia Cooper, who was born enslaved yet ultimately earned a doctoral degree from the Sorbonne, and Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of Bethune-Cookman College.
Exposing the hypocrisy in American assertions of democracy and discrediting European notions of intellectual superiority, Cooper argued that all human beings had a right to grow. Bethune believed that education is the right of all citizens in a democracy. Both women's philosophies raised questions of how human and civil rights are intertwined with educational access, scholarly research, pedagogy, and community service. This history of Black women traces quantitative research, explores Black women's collegiate memories, and identifies significant geographic patterns in America's institutional development.
Vassar
Passing as White: Anita Hemmings 1897
By Olivia Mancini '00
When Anita Florence Hemmings applied to Vassar in 1893, there was nothing in her records to indicate that she would be any different from the 103 other girls who were entering the class of 1897. But by August 1897, the world as well as the college had discovered her secret: Anita Hemmings was Vassar’s first Black graduate — more than 40 years before the college opened its doors to African Americans.
In the late 19th century, Vassar’s atmosphere might have been best described as aristocratic. Since its opening in 1861, the prestigious women’s school had catered almost exclusively to the daughters of the nation’s elite. Had Hemmings marked her race as "colored" on her application, her admittance to the college most certainly would have been denied.
"She has a clear olive complexion, heavy Black hair and eyebrows and coal Black eyes," a Boston newspaper wrote of a 25-year-old Hemmings in August 1897. "The strength of her strain of white blood has so asserted itself that she could pass anywhere simply as a pronounced brunette of white race."
http://vq.vassar.edu/issues/2002/01/features/passing-as-white.html#sthash.lPgXJsic.dpuf
Wellesley
Dr. Harriet Alleyne Rice graduated from Wellesley in 1887 and earned a medical degree at the University of Michigan.
Wellesley College, "The Wellesley Prelude" (1891). The Wellesley Prelude. Book 71. http://repository.wellesley.edu/prelude/71
--http://www.eyesofglory.com/a-woman-of-valor/
Dr. Harriet Alleyne Rice (1887), Ella Lavini Smith (1888) and Portia Washington Pittman (1901-1902 without graduating) were among the first Black women to attend Wellesley.
Ella Lavinia Smith
Dr. Harriet
Alleyne Rice
Portia Washington Pittman
Commencement speakers 2
https://www.smith.edu/about-smith/smith-history/commencement-speakers
Commencement speakers 3
https://www.smith.edu/about-smith/smith-history/commencement-speakers
Reverends
On Keeping the Fourth of July
The Atlantic contemplates the beginnings of American imperialism and the waning of patriotic spirit in 1902.
A giant American flag is displayed by the Amoskeag River Mills in Manchester, New Hampshire, on July 4, 1915. Harlan A. Marshall / AP
The readers of the Atlantic may remember that in the January number there was something said about the Cheerful and the Cheerless Reader. Under a harmless fiction which enabled him to speak as the Toastmaster of the Monthly dinner, the editor of the magazine commented upon some of the articles which were to make up the bill of fare for the ensuing year. And July is here already; the year is half over; and the monthly feasts have been duly spread. No doubt they might have been more skillfully served. The Atlantic's modest mahogany tree might have been garnished in a more costly manner. But there has been wholesome fare each month, and good company, and new voices to mingle pleasantly with the more familiar ones. Saying grace has nowadays gone somewhat out of fashion, but among the Atlantic's circle there has been at least a grateful disposition to return thanks. It is the Cheerful Reader who has been mainly in evidence since January. Perhaps the Cheerless Readers are suffering from writer's cramp.
Or are they grimly sharpening their pens for some future onslaught? At any rate they have kept strangely, perhaps ominously silent. It has been the turn of the gayer souls to be voluble. The Toastmaster has been assured that even the business communications to the magazine, such as renewals of subscriptions and directions for summer addresses, have frequently been signed "Yours Cheerfully." It is true that this access of gayety may prove to be but temporary. In that case there is some comfort in the shrewd advice of a seasoned man of letters, who writes to the editor: "My theory is that every periodical should contain in every number something to make somebody 'cuss.' It is certainly the next best thing to making them delighted." Very possibly that is just what the unlucky Toastmaster is now proceeding to do, in offering, by way of introduction to the contents of the present number, some considerations On Keeping the Fourth of July.
It should be said in the first place, that few readers of the Atlantic are likely to accuse it of a lack of patriotism. An intelligent devotion to the highest interests of America is the chief article in its creed. It endeavors to secure, month by month, the opinions of competent observers of our national life, and to encourage perfect freedom in the expression of those opinions. While it is not committed to the support of any partisan platform or policy, it believes that the men who have been chosen to carry forward the present administration of the government are honest, able, and high-minded, and that they deserve the fullest possible cooperation of their fellow citizens in maintaining American interests at home and abroad. Whatever criticism of national policy may appear from time to time in these pages is due to the fact that in a government like ours, based upon freely voiced public opinion, men of knowledge and conviction are bound to differ in their interpretation of current issues. It is the aim of the Atlantic to present views based upon both knowledge and conviction. Such has been the spirit of Mr. Nelson's review of the opening months of President Roosevelt's administration; of Lieutenant Hanna's and Superintendent Atkinson's accounts of educational work in Cuba and the Philippines; of Mr. Villard's paper on The New Army of the United States. This last article, together with one shortly to appear, on The New Navy, will perhaps, serve better than the others to illustrate the attitude of this magazine. Many of its readers deplore, as its editor certainly does, that present glorification of brute force which would measure national greatness by the size of national armaments. We may properly wish for and work for the day when the Disarmament Trust—so agreeably pictured by Mr. Rollo Ogden—shall be a reality. But even while we are supporting schools and churches and every other means for promoting good will among men) we keep a policeman at the crossing, in the interests of that very decency which will ultimately make the policeman unnecessary. The world's cross-roads will have to be policed for a long time yet, until men learn to hate one another less, and our own country's share in the world's police service should be efficient and ample. The good citizen of the United States ought to know something about this department of his country's activities, and the Atlantic believes in offering him the information, whatever may be his—or the editor's personal views as to the essential folly and wickedness of militarism.
The current number of the magazine for example, contains several of these articles devoted to fundamental problems of our national life, issues that should not be forgotten on Independence Day. Mr. Sedgwick's interpretation of Certain Aspects of America is characterized by the frank analysis, the insistence upon the subordination of material to spiritual values, for which he has so often made the readers of the Atlantic his debtors. Mr. Willoughby, the Treasurer of Porto Rico, gives a résumé of the legislation already enacted in that island, where American "expansion" is apparently accomplishing some of its most beneficent results. Mr. Le Roy, who has lately returned from two years' service with the Philippine Commission, calls attention to the grave consequences of perpetuating our American race prejudices in dealing with the Filipinos. He shows that the "nigger" theory of proceeding with the natives has already proved a serious obstacle to the pacification of the islands. How deep rooted this theory is, and how far reaching are the moral and political penalties of African slavery in America, can be traced in Mr. Andrew Sledd's illuminating discussion of the negro problem in the South.
Indeed, profitable argument concerning the behavior of our soldiers and civilians in the Orient must begin with this sort of scrutiny into what we really feel and think at home. Self-examination, reflection upon the actual organization of our American society, and upon the attempts we are making to impose that organization by force upon Asiatic peoples,—this is surely a useful occupation for some, portion of the Fourth of July. It happens that the Toastmaster is quite ignorant of the political affiliations of the authors of those four articles to which allusion has been made. But men of parties and creeds have shared and continue to share in the Atlantic's hospitality, and on Independence Day in particular, questions of party politics should be tacitly dismissed. On other days of the year we may be party men.... But to-day we are Americans all; and all nothing but Americans."
Do they sound rather grandiloquent, these orotund Websterian phrases of half a century ago? Have we grown superior to spread-eagleism, to barbecues and buncombe, to the early firecracker and the long-awaited sky-rocket, and all the pomp and circumstance of the Glorious Fourth? The Toastmaster, for one, confesses to a boyish fondness for the old-fashioned, reckless, noisy day. He is willing to be awakened at an unseemly hour, if only for the memory of dewy-wet dawns of long ago, and the imminent deadly breach of the trusty cannon under the windows of irascible old gentlemen, of real battle-flags waving, and perspiring bands pounding out The Star-Spangled Banner, and impassioned orators who twisted the British Lion's tail until it looked like a corkscrew. The day we celebrate, ladies and gentlemen! And may there ever be American boys to celebrate the day!
In the schooling of the twentieth century we have learned something, of course. Twisting the Lion's tail already seems a rather silly amusement, especially when it is likely to lessen the income from our investments. "We deeply sympathize with the brave burghers," announces a New Orleans paper, "but we cannot afford to miss selling a single mule." It seems provincial now to repeat the old self-satisfied "What have we got to do with abroad?"' We have a great deal to do with abroad. We have been buying geographies, and have grown suddenly conscious of the world's life. And new occasions teach new duties. Here is a fighting parson in Boston who insists that we shall " take the Golden Rule and make it militant," and a doughty Captain of Infantry in Buffalo who preaches that "the currents of civilization flow from the throne of God, and lead through ways sometimes contrary to one's will, but it seems to me that our civilization of. steel and steam must be laid over all the world, even though its foundations be cemented with the blood of every Black race that strives to thwart us in our policy of benevolent assimilation." Thus is the Websterian doctrine of "Americans all; and all nothing but Americans" brought up to date in 1902.
And yet looking back to the Fourth of July oratory preceding and immediately following the Civil War it is difficult to avoid the feeling that we have lost something too. Beneath all the rhodomontade there was a real generosity of sentiment. There was boasting enough and to spare, but it was a boasting of principles, of liberal political theory, of the blessings of liberty itself. The politicians of that day were not so frankly materialistic as their successors, not such keen computers of the profits of commercial supremacy. It is true that they had less temptation. It is likewise true that they failed, in more than one section of the country, to carry the principles of the Declaration to their logical conclusion. But they were at least proud of the Declaration; it did not occur to them to doubt its logic, although here and there they may have forgotten to practice it. But ever since Rufus Choate set the bad example of sneering at its "glittering generalities," there have not been lacking clever young students of history and politics who have been eager to demonstrate its fallacies. One may suspect that some of the Americans who have just attended King Edward's coronation and many more who have stayed at home and read about it, are at heart a trifle ashamed of the provincial earnestness of Jefferson's indictment of King George. And we are told that in one portion of the American dominions, a year ago, it was a crime to read the Declaration aloud.
But it is no crime to read it here, and one may venture to say that a good many inconspicuous Americans, who have not recently refreshed their memory of the immortal document, will this year hunt around until they find it—in some humble Appendix to a School History, very likely,—and take the trouble to read it through. For there has been a good deal said about the Declaration lately, and much more is likely to be said before our Philippine troubles are ended. The past three months have thrown more light upon the essential character of our occupation of the Archipelago than the preceding three years have done. The Atlantic argued many months ago that the first duty of the Administration and Congress was to give the country the facts, that it was impossible to decide upon our future course in the islands until we knew more about what was actually happening there. We have found out something at last. The knowledge is not very pleasant, but it sticks in the memory, and not all the fire-crackers and fun of the Glorious Fourth will keep American citizens from reflecting that we are engaged, on that anniversary, in subjugating a weaker people who are struggling, however blindly and cruelly, for that independence which we once claimed as an "inalienable right " for ourselves.
For subjugation is the topic of the day; it is no longer a question of "expansion," or even of "imperialism." It is plain enough now that we are holding the Philippines by physical force only, and that the brave and unselfish men we have sent there have been assigned to a task which is not only repellent to Americans, but bitterly resented by the supposed beneficiaries of our action. To risk the life of a soldier like Lawton or a civilian like Governor Taft in order to carry the blessings of a Christian civilization to benighted Malays seemed, in the opinion of a majority of Americans in 1899, a generous and heroic enterprise. It was a dream that did the kindly American heart infinite credit. But now that we have learned how the thing must be done, if it is to be done successfully, the conscience of the country is ill at ease. It is neither necessary nor desirable to dwell on the fact that some of our soldiers have disgraced their uniform. Such men have shown the pitiable weakness of human nature under distressing conditions which they did not create; but the story is a shamefully old one; it has been told for three hundred years in the history of tropical colonization. Lincoln put the whole moral of it, with homely finality, into his phrase about no man being good enough to govern another man without the other man's consent. Not "strong enough," nor "smart enough," nor "Anglo-Saxon enough;" simply not good enough. Upon that point, at least, there is nothing more to be said.
Rude as this awakening to the actual nature of the Philippine campaign has been, it is far less disheartening to the lover of republican institutions than the period of moral indifference which preceded it. It is a lesser evil to see war in its nakedness and be shocked by it, than to be so absorbed in material interests as to be willing to sacrifice a gallant Lawton in order that some sleek trader should win a fortune. Any bitter truth is preferable to
The common, loveless lust of territory;
The lips that only babble of their mart
While to the night the shrieking hamlets blaze;
The bought allegiance and the purchased praise,
False honor and shameful glory.
With the passing of this good-natured, easy-going indifference to suffering and struggle, we are distinctly nearer a solution of the Philippine problem. President Roosevelt declared last December, with characteristic generosity, that the aim of our endeavors was to "make them free after the fashion of the really self-governing peoples." If he were now, in the light of the additional evidence as to the attitude of the Filipinos and the changed sentiment here, to send a message to Congress embodying a definite program leading not merely to Filipino "Self-government " but to ultimate national independence, he would have behind him a substantial majority, not only of his own party, but of the citizens of the United States. To promise the Filipinos ultimate independence,—upon any reasonable conditions,—meaning to keep that promise, as we have already kept our word to Cuba, would be honor enough for any administration. President Roosevelt's administration inherited the Philippine "burden." The islands came to us partly through force of circumstances, partly through national vanity and thirst for power, but mainly through our ignorance. Now that we have learned what we were really bargaining for, it becomes possible to give over the burden to those to whom it belongs. It cannot be transferred in a day, it is true, but a day is long enough to make a resolve to rid ourselves of it at the earliest practicable moment. And the Fourth of July is a good day for such a resolution. To leave the Philippine Islands, under some amicable arrangement, to the Philippine people may be called "scuttling,"—if critics like that word,—but it will be a return to American modes of procedure, to that fuller measure of Democracy which is the only cure for the evils of Democracy. For the chief obstacle to the subjugation of an Asiatic people by Americans lies in human nature itself. The baser side of human nature may always be depended upon to strip such conquest of its tinsel and betray its essential hideousness; while the nobler side of human nature protests against the forcible annexation of a weaker people by the countrymen of Washington. This protest, in the Toastmaster's opinion, will never be more instinctive or more certain of final victory than on the day sacred to the memory of our own national independence.
This anniversary animates and gladdens and unites all American hearts. On other days of the year we may be party men, indulging in controversies, more or less important to the public good; we may have likes and dislikes, and we may maintain our political differences, often with warm, and sometimes with angry feelings. But to-day we are Americans all; and all nothing but Americans.—Daniel Webster: Address on July 4, 1851.
The assumption is that the cure for the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
—Jane Addams: Democracy and Social Ethics, 1902.
Ethel and Helen’s accomplishments after Smith
http://www.dmdfilms.com/chesnutt.html
http://www.dmdfilms.com/about.html
http://www.dmdfilms.com/upcoming.html
From Charles Chesnutt bio in
1919 National Cyclopedia of the Colored Race, Vol. 1, P. 347.
Two of his daughters are graduates of Smith College and another graduated from the College for Women of Western Reserve University. His only son is a graduate of Harvard University, studied dentistry in Northwestern University, Chicago and is practicing his profession in Chicago. One of his daughters, Mrs. Ethel C. Williams, is the wife of Professor Edward C. Williams, of Howard University; another, Miss Helen Chestnut is a teacher in Central High School, Cleveland, and the third, Miss Dorothy Chestnut, is a teacher in the Cleveland Public schools.
Mr. Chestnut is a member of the Rowfant Club, The Chamber of Commerce, The City Club, The Western Reserve Club, The Cleveland Bar Association, The Church Club, and the Council of Sociology, of which latter body he served one year as President. He and his family are connected with Emanuel Episcopal Church, on Euclid Avenue.
Mr. Chestnut has appeared upon the platform as a reader of his own writings and has charmed large audiences with the rare skill with which he handles the dialect of the North Carolina Negro.
The Washington Times says: "There was not a dull moment in the two hours spent with Mr. Chestnut last evening, and at the conclusion of the program he received the hearty applause and individual congratulations of his auditors."
From The Augusta Ga. Chronicle: "There have arisen many interpreters of the Negro character, but none have made him more humorous than Charles W. Chestnut in the various stories brought together in 'The Conjure Woman.' The 'Uncle Julius' who relates these stories of Negro superstition bids fair to become as popular as 'Uncle Remus' because of his rich, lazy dialect, his characteristic dark garrulousness, and his cunning consciousness of effect his yarns have upon his hearers." The Christian Register, Boston, says: "They are like none of the other Negro stories with which we are familiar, and take an exceptionally high place both as a study of race characteristics and for genuine dramatic interest.
1879: In April, Ethel P. Chesnutt is born to Charles W. Chesnutt and Susan
(Perry) Chesnutt.
1893: Ethel enters Central High School.
1897: In June, she graduates from Central High School. In the fall, Ethel
begins studies at Smith College in Northampton, MA.
1901: Ethel graduates from Smith College in June and becomes an
instructor at Tuskegee Institute.
1902: In November, she quits Tuskegee and returns to Cleveland, where she
marries Edward Christopher Williams, known as an author and the
first African American professional librarian, serving at Western
Reserve and Howard universities.
1903: In October, birth of her son, Charles Waddell Chesnutt Williams, who
later became a lawyer and died before completing a biography of
his father. (Where is the uncompleted biography of Edward Christopher
Williams?)
1906: Represented Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical School at the 25th
anniversary celebration of Tuskegee Institute.
1924: December 24, husband dies at Freedmen’s hospital in Washington,
D.C., while on faculty at Howard University.
1929: December 24, husband dies while working on Ph.D. at Columbia
University.
1932: Received telegram(s) regarding her father’s death.
1952: Book Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line is
in part dedicated to Ethel, p. vi
Last but by no means least, I owe warmest thanks to my two sisters, Ethel and
Dorothy, for their encouragement and co-operation….
--Helen M. Chesnutt, Feb. 14, 1952, in Charles Waddell Chesnutt:
Pioneer of the Color Line, p. vi
???: Ethel dies
Ethel Perry Chesnutt Williams (1879-XXXX) and husband Edward Christopher Williams, known as an author and the first African American professional librarian, married in 1902. Williams was valedictorian of his class at Adelbert College, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, librarian of Hatch Library at Western Reserve, principal of M Street High School in Washington, D. C., and librarian of Howard University.
Edward C. Williams, Class of 1892. One of the most accomplished scholars to matriculate at Case Western Reserve University, Edward Christoper Williams was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1871. He graduated from Adelbert College in 1892 as valedictorian of his class and member of the Phi Beta Kappa national honor society. He was one of the society's six African American members. As a student, he also held the Ohio Conference Championship for mile runner.
--African American Scholars at Case
Upon graduation, Mr. Williams accepted the first Assistant Librarian position at Western Reserve University's Hatch Library. Two years later (1898), he not only assumed the directorship of the Library, but also took sabbatical in order to attend the New York State Library School in Albany. After completing the two-year Master's Degree program in only one year, Mr. Williams returned to the University. He initially prepared the organizational plan of the Library School and, when the School was established in 1904, taught courses in Reference Work, Bibliography, Public Documents, and Book Selection. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Mr. Williams was a founding member of the Ohio Library Association (OLA) and lectured at the Ohio Institute of Library workers, which held its annual meetings each year at OLA.
In 1909, for reasons not clearly documented, Mr. Williams left his position at Western Reserve University and became principal of a high school in Washington, D.C. Not content as a school administrator, in 1916 Mr. Williams became Librarian at Howard University in Washington, D.C. There, he established the Library School and also taught German, Italian, and French in the Department of Romance Languages. In 1924, Mr. Williams became head of the Department. Versatile and multi-talented, Mr. Williams was also a classical drama playwriter and received a Julius Rosenwald fellowhip in 1929 to study for a Ph.D at Columbia University. He died on December 24, 1929 while working on his degree.
Porter, Dorothy B.,"Phylon Profile, XIV: Edward Christopher Williams," Phylon (1940-1956), Vol. 8, No. 4. (4th Qtr., 1947), pp. 315-321. Howard University Bio;
Josey, E.J., and Ann Allen Shockley, eds., Handbook of Black Librarianship (Littleton, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1977): 30-31.
Josey, E.J. "Edward Christopher Williams: A Librarian's Librarian," Journal of Library History 4 (April 1969): 106-122.
The Black Renaissance in Washington, 1920-1930s
biography of Williams appears in Phylon, the Atlanta University Review of Race and Culture, Atlanta university Volume VIII, Number 4 pp. 315-321.
Russell H. Davis, Memorable Negroes in Cleveland's Past (Cleveland: Western Reserve Historical Society, 1969)
Russell H. Davis, Black Americans in Cleveland from George Peake to Carl B. Stokes, 1796-1969 (Washington: Associated Publishers, 1972 and 1985).
Caldwell Titcomb, "The Earliest Black Members of Phi Beta Kappa," The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Autumn 2001, pp 97-98.
E. J. Josey, "Edward Christopher Williams: A Librarian's Librarian, The Journal of Library History, volume IV, No. 2, April 1969, pp. 106-122
News clippings, obituaries, alumni surveys, and correspondence about Williams.
There is a reference in a letter about Williams that a fellow Adelbert alumnus and colleague recalled Williams was very private but "He did, however, at one time reveal, sadly rather than bitterly, that while his relationships with the men of the school were friendly, that the wives of the faculty would not recognize his wife. I judge, he at times wondered about possibilities elsewhere, e.g., in England."
1899, November 2 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Edward C. Williams, CWC 121
1899, December 5 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Edward C. Williams, CWC 124
1900, February 27 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Edward C. Williams, CWC 142
1900, March 4 Edward C. Williams to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 143
1900, April 28 Edward C. Williams to Charles Waddell Chesnutt, CWC 148
1900, May 12 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Edward C. Williams, CWC 148
1901, October 26 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, TBA 164
1901, October 29 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Ethel Chesnutt, CWC 175
1902 Helen on Ethel’s early career, CWC 183
1902 Helen on Ethel’s resignation from Tuskegee to marry Edward, CWC 184
1902 Helen on Charles’s thoughts about Booker T. Washington/ Tuskegee, CWC 191
1903, June 27 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, CWC 193
1903, August 11 Charles Waddell Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, CWC 194
1881: In December, Helen M. Chesnutt is born to Charles W. Chesnutt and
Susan (Perry) Chesnutt.
1893: Helen enters Central High School.
1897: In June, Helen graduates from Central High School and in fall enters
Smith College.
1901: Helen graduates from Smith College in June
1902: Helen goes to Baltimore to teach. Then she begins substituting in
Cleveland public schools. When she teaches Latin at Central High
School, one of her students is Langston Hughes.
1912: Helen tours Europe with her father.
1921: In the summer, she begins to teach Latin at the Foreign Language
School at Western Reserve University.
1925: Helen receives her M.A. at Columbia University.
1927: In November, she suffers a ruptured appendix followed by peritonitis.
1952: Book Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line is published.
1969: Helen M. Chesnutt dies at the age of 88.
1902 Helen on her early career, CWC 183
1902 Helen on her move from Baltimore to Cleveland, CWC 184
1902 Helen on Chesnutts’ new house and Cleveland life, CWC 184-190
The 14-room house into which the Charles Chesnutt family moved in 1904 at 1668 (later renumbered 9719) Lamont Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio. Charles lived there for 28 years until his death in 1932. The family moved out in 1936 and the house, situated on a lot 300 feet deep by 70 feet wide, was torn down when the Charles Orr School was built on the site. Charles W. Chesnutt School is on E. 71 & Kinsman.
Helen Chesnutt in 1958 at the Cleveland Public Library, which holds a collection of Charles Chesnutt materials, in front of the Charles Chesnutt exhibit.
Because of Helen Chesnutt’s meticulous curatorial care and dissemination of her father’s papers, we know much about the life of turn-of-the-twentieth century race writer Charles Chesnutt, including the lives of his two daughters who were the first known Black students at Smith College.
Extras
Paradise Pond, circa 1901
Mt. Holyoke College
The first among the Seven Sisters (Mt. Holyoke,Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Radcliffe, Bryn Mawr and Barnard) to knowingly graduate an African American woman, when it graduated Hortense Parker in 1883.
Mt. Holyoke Hortense Parker 1883
Wellesley Harriet Rice 1887
Vassar Anita Florence 1897
Hemmings
Radcliffe Alberta Virginia 1898
Scott
Smith Otelia Cromwell 1900
Barnard Zora Neale 1928
Hurston
Bryn Mawr Enid Cook 1931
Compiled by by Alana Belcon FP'04 in
History 283, Fall Semester 2003
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hatlas/hparker/listaastd.htm
Hortense Parker (standing, second from right) with other members of the Class of 1883. In 1883, Mt. Holyoke Seminary conducted its first tabulation of students by race (2), documenting Parker as the first African American in the graduating class.
She was the daughter of John Parker, an active abolitionist and former slave who bought his freedom in 1845. She started at the Seminary in 1878 and was one of seventeen girls who entered that year. She was unable to attend school each year consecutively, spent a total of 2 years at Mt. Holyoke, and graduated in 1883. The exact year of her birth is not known but she died on December 9, 1938 as a result of tripping in her home.
Her Life at Mt. Holyoke (3)
Courtesy MHC Archives
Historian Margaret A. Lowe examines the process by which women at Cornell University, Smith College, and Spelman College emancipated themselves between 1875 and 1930, creating new models of 'body image.'
Selected Charles Waddell Chesnutt Resources |
The African American Literature Book Club has a profile of Chesnutt. AllLearn presents a list of links and descriptions. University experts at Yale, Stanford and the University of Oxford reviewed these sites and pronounced them the leading sites on Charles W. Chesnutt. Andrews, William L., The Literary Career of Charles W. Chesnutt, Louisiana State University Press, 1980. The Charles Chesnutt Digital Archive offers an extensive collection of works by Chesnutt, including novels, short stories, essays, reviews, and poems. In addition to electronic versions of those works by Chesnutt that are readily available in print, (the) collection includes hard-to-find stories, reviews, essays, and poems, (including one transcribed from a manuscript in the Chesnutt collection at Fisk University). Many of the texts have been scanned directly from original print periodical versions. The site also includes a deep collection of reviews by others of Chesnutt's works, and a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. Chesnutt, Helen M., Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952. Keller, Frances Richardson, An American Crusade: The Life of Charles Waddell Chesnutt. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1978. The Library of America shows the importance of Chesnutt's work as a forerunner in race issues and in using fiction to present his message against slavery. The site provides a brief biography, information on his literary career in the context of history, and commentary on Chesnutt's position as "a major fiction writer in the nineteenth century." Smith, Jessie Carney, ed., Notable Black American Men. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 1998. University of North Carolina has a biography of Chesnutt along with electronic editions of many of his books. The University of Virginia has an extensive listing of works available electronically, including those of Charles Chesnutt. |
Reunion and Reconstruction: New Gateway Course on the Civil War
Amid all of this research activity, the Civil War course cluster has also been busy in other arenas, coordinating the exhibit “Visualizing Uncle Tom”, for instance, and funding lectures from distinguished visiting speakers. Last year’s lineup included Clemson University English professor (and Stowe expert) Susanna Ashton, who also consulted on Randall’s Stowe House project, as well as the University of Maryland’s Robert Levine, who spoke about Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln in Bowdoin’s annual Russwurm Lecture. Next spring’s Russwurm lecturer will be Craig S. Wilder of MIT, whose research explores themes of slavery and Ivy League colleges.
And then, of course, there are the courses themselves, the heart of the interdisciplinary course cluster initiative. Following the great success of a new team-taught course last spring, “Uncle Tom and Its Afterlife,” Chakkalakal recently held a workshop to put together an even more collaborative course to introduce the cluster: “Reconstruction and Reunion,” offered for the first time next spring, drawing from the disciplines of history, English, Africana studies, and art history. “It’s a gateway course to give students an introduction to exploring the Civil War and its aftermath through all of these different lenses,” Chakkalakal said.
This replaces two separate courses on the Reconstruction taught by Chakkalakal and Rael in their respective departments, one from a literary perspective and the other from a historical one. “We’ve dismantled these classes for a while, so that we can bring the different disciplines together and teach this period of American history and literature more effectively,” Chakkalakal said. Meanwhile, the cluster continues to offer a range of courses within individual departments: this fall Rael is teaching a history course called “Antislavery” as well as an overview of Civil War history, and Chakkalakal is teaching “Literature of the Civil War Era.”
“What we’d like to do is move students through in a linear way throughout their four years, where they take the gateway during their first or second year, choose additional courses, and bring things together in some kind of independent research their senior year,” Chakkalakal said.
In the new gateway course, Chakkalakal and Rael will each teach sections of the course, while art historian Byrd will contribute a segment on the homes of the Reconstruction. Goodyear will teach a module on how to curate an exhibit on the Civil War, and Lindemann will teach a component about Civil War archives.
“The cluster is allowing us to really grapple with these thorny issues related to the history, literature, art, and visual culture of the Civil War, in more accurate ways than I think we have been doing,” Chakkalakal said. “It enables us to bring our different sides of the story together and put them into conversation: there are so many sides to telling this story, and we want students to walk away with more than just one side. We want them to be able to challenge, debate, and express a diversity of opinions effectively around different topics related to the Civil War. We want to to broaden and deepen their understanding of this moment in American history.”
Stay tuned for more storiehttp://community.bowdoin.edu/news/tag/bowdoin-faculty/s about the Mellon course clusters (and keep an eye out for a symposium sponsored by the Medieval and Early Modern Studies cluster in spring 2015).
October 9, 2014 by Abby McBride
Sabbatical Seminars: Casselberry on Black Pentecostal Women
This week’s faculty seminar series featured Assistant Professor of Africana Studies Judith Casselberry, who gave a presentation called “Harvesting Souls for Christ: Black Pentecostal Women’s Labor at the Altar.” In each weekly lunch seminar, faculty from across Bowdoin’s curriculum gather for a talk by one of their colleagues, who is typically returning from a sabbatical devoted to research or an artistic project.
Judith Casselberry presents “Harvesting Souls for Christ: Black Pentecostal Women’s Labor at the Altar”
Casselberry, who last year was a research associate in the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School, described the unique role of altar workers – almost exclusively women – in the Harlem-based Church of our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith, known as COOLJC. Read about Casselberry’s research on the remarkable spiritual and physical labor performed by altar workers within the male-headed hierarchy of Pentecostal churches.
Bibliography in progress
Barksdale Hall, Roland. "Dammond, William Hunter." African American National Biography, Eds. Henry
Louis Gates Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. Oxford African American Studies Center,
http://www.oxfordaasc.com/article/opr/t0001/e5907 (accessed 19 April 2015).
_______. “The Testimony of William Hunter Dammond: The First African American Graduate of the
University of Pittsburgh.” The Journal of Pan African Studies, June 2007.
Cromwell., Adelaide. My Mothering Aunt: Otelia Cromwell.
Cromwell, Otelia. co-edited Readings from Negro Authors for Schools and Colleges
Otelia Cromwell Lucretia Mott, by Otelia Cromwell, published by Harvard University Press
Review of Hilary J. Moss, Schooling Citizens: The Struggle for African American Education in Antebellum America,
vol. 77, no. 2 (May 2011), 429-30. Brett Gadsden
African American woman measuring height of two Caucasian children, 1901
Woman may be Ms. "Aunt" Betsy Washington, whom Tarbell photographed/interviewed for an article entitled "My Experiences Photographing the Negro in the South" featured in the December 1903 edition of New England Magazine.
John H. Tarbell
Filename: P0030_0001.tif
Glass Negative 0001
Downloadable image :: Alternate View
Radcliffe
Barnard
Bryn Mawr
II. Context of Black education, focusing on 1837-1901, including Smith College’s history
a. Earliest Black education in America
1. Schooling Citizens: The Struggle for African American Education in Antebellum America Hilary J. Moss
2 Self-taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom Heather Andrea Williams.
3. In 1900, W. E. B. Du Bois found that there were around 2,600 living African Americans who had graduated
from post-secondary institutions.
By 1900: Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, more than 2,000 have earned higher education
degrees by this time, approximately 390 from white colleges and universities.
4. By 1908 there were 242, according to the 1910 book An Era of Progress and Promise
5. UC Berkeley professor Michael Cohen shares in his Introduction to American Studies class (lecture 11, 34:00)
that in 1917 there were 2,132 Black students in college, including fewer than 50 in predominantly
white schools
b. Historically Black colleges and universities (--2--)
1. Cheyney was the first, in 1837
2. The first to rise to the college or normal school level was Lincoln University, started in 1854
3. Wilberforce educated many planters’ children, beginning in 1856
4. Miner Normal School Howard University
5. Mary Holmes Seminary educated women, beginning in 1892
6. Black Mammy Memorial Institute
c. Black students at elite colleges
Lucy Stanton, 1850, the first African American woman to earn a U.S. college diploma
2. Berea
3. Yale
4. Other Ivy League
Harvard 1870, Cornell Law 1890, Brown, Columbia, Princeton, Penn,
Dartmouth
5. Other Seven Sisters https://www.luminpdf.com/viewer/6MvjDNMg8TnJ3b8mY
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hatlas/hparker/listaastd.htm
Radcliffe
Wellesley
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/media/mhc-celebrates-hortense-parker-day-april-15-0
Barnard
6. Other and both earlier and later schools with Black graduates
John Brown Russwurm, Bowdoin Class of 1826 and the College’s
first African American graduate
Hillsdale College in Michigan 1844
Dr. Clay Carson excerpt RE W.E. B. Du Bois about his daughter’s wedding
The College of William and Mary 1951
West Point 1877
University of Pittsburgh, William Hunter Dammond 1893
d. Smith College’s founding
1. Chartered in 1871, opened in 1875
2. Northampton was settled in 1654, religious fervor was quickened by the ministry of Jonathan Edwards,
whose preaching sparked the religious revivals of the Great Awakening in the 1740s
3. In 1885 noted Southern unapologist author George Washington Cable (1844-1925) moved to Northampton
because his portrayal of racial issues in his novels made him unwelcome in his native New Orleans
Rael has begun working with Alexxa Leon ’15 to digitize the Freedom’s Journal, the first African American owned newspaper in the United States (1827-1829), founded and edited by John Brown Russwurm, Bowdoin Class of 1826 and the College’s first African American graduate. That’s in addition to the College’s student-powered endeavor to digitize its famed O. O. Howard collection with support from a major grant awarded by the NHPRC last spring (so far, more than 41,000 images have been scanned).
Letter written by student to university president accusing DuBois of sexual harassment just before he eft Atlanta University the first time.
http://www.chesnuttarchive.org/works/Stories/funeral.html
Opening: The Methodist choir sang "Rock of Ages." Opening: The Baptist Chior softly chanted "Asleep in Jesus," until
they were compelled to sing louder in order to be heard at all
Passage of Scripture Passage of Scripture
Prayer Prayer
The Methodist minister rendered thanks for the blessing of a Mr. Brown, on the other side of the hall, with equal fervor asked
beautiful life that had been spared so long among them as an for comfort to the sorrowing widow in her bereavement.
example of right living
Prayed that the event they had come together to mourn over Prayed that the event they had come together to mourn over might be a warning to those present of the transitioriness of might be a warning to those present of the transitioriness of
all earthly Good, and that by calling attention to the common all earthly Good, and that by calling attention to the common
mortality it might humble their souls and drive out jealousy mortality it might humble their souls and drive out jealousy
and envy and malice and all Uncharitableness. and envy and malice and all Uncharitableness.
The Methodist choir sang a hymn of triumph over death and the The Baptist choir rendered an anthem breathing resignation and grave comfort.
Some one discreetly closed one of the doors during the singing, so that no discord marred the harmony of this part of the service.
When the two addresses were well under way, a man came up the street and entered the premises by the front gate. There had been several late arrivals, but until this one appeared they had all found seats in the house. As the newcomer approached he saw the crepe upon the door, noted the half-drawn blinds, and glanced across the lot at the row of carriages drawn up on the side street. With an expression of mingled wonder and alarm, he drew nearer the door and heard the sound of preaching. He stepped softly upon the porch but paused before he reached the door, and, after hesitating a moment, came down again, and going around to the side of the house stood on tiptoe and peered curiously through the half-closed blinds at the scene within. First he noticed the coffin, piled high with flowers. Then. the sermon fixed his attention, and clutching the window-sill with his elbows he stood listening for several minutes.
"Indeed, my dear brethren and sisters," Elder Johnson was saying,
"we may well mourn. the death of our dear brother, and look upon it as
an irreparable loss. Where will we find a man who was so generous in
his contributions to the church, so devoted to his family; or who set a
better example of the Christian life? In him we have lost a leader in
every good work, a faithful friend, a dear brother, a strong pillar in the
church, a champion of his race, a man whom we all loved and admired.
Cut off in the prime of life, in the full tide of his usefulness, we mourn his
departure and we rejoice that he has lived-we celebrate his virtues and
we revere his memory."
The man outside dropped from his somewhat constrained position, and the puzzled expression on his face became even more pronounced. But he had heard the voice, though indistinctly, of the minister across the hall, and he went softly around the rear of the house and picking up a small box which lay it the yard, placed it under a. window, of the other room. Looking through the slats, he saw a woman dressed in deepest mourning. Her face was concealed by the heavy crepe veil that fell before it, but her form was shaken by convulsive sobs. Grouped around the room was an audience equally as large as the one across the hall, and the young Baptist minister was saying, with great unction:
"There are no words, my hearers, by which we can adequately express the sympathy we feel for this bereaved widow in this, her hour of deepest earthly sorrow. Our hearts go out to this beloved sister, whose mainstay has been cut off, and who has been left to tread the thorny path of life in loneliness and desolation. I know that if the departed can look down from that upper sphere which he now adorns, upon this scene of his late earthly career, no more painful thought could mar the celestial serenity of his happiness than the reflection that he had left behind him in inconsolable grief the companion of his earthly joys and sorrows. We feel for our sister; we commend her to the source of all comfort; we assure her of such friendly offices as are within our weak power. And we hope that in time the edge of her grief will lose its sharpness, and that she may feel resigned to the decree of Heaven, and find such consolation as a life of usefulness may yet have to offer her."
The two sermons came to an end almost simultaneously, and again the two audiences were led in prayer.
"Indeed, my dear brethren and sisters," Elder Johnson was ... the young Baptist minister was saying, with great unction:
saying, "we may well mourn. the death of our dear brother, "There are no words, my hearers, by which we can adequately
and look upon it as an irreparable loss. Where will we find a express the sympathy we feel for this bereaved widow in this,
man who was so generous in his contributions to the church, so her hour of deepest earthly sorrow. Our hearts go out to this
devoted to his family; or who set a better example of the Christian beloved sister, whose mainstay has been cut off, and who
life? In him we have lost a leader in every good work, a faithful has been left to tread the thorny path of life in loneliness
friend, a dear brother, a strong pillar in the church, a champion of and desolation. I know that if the departed can look down
his race, a man whom we all loved and admired. Cut off in the from that upper sphere which he now adorns, upon this
prime of life, in the full tide of his usefulness, we mourn his scene of his late earthly career, no more painful thought could
departure and we rejoice that he has lived-we celebrate his mar the celestial serenity of his happiness than the reflection
virtues and we revere his memory." that he had left behind him in inconsolable grief the companion
of his earthly joys and sorrows. We feel for our sister; we
commend her to the source of all comfort; we assure her
of such friendly offices as are within our weak power. And we
hope that in time the edge of her grief will lose its sharpness,
and that she may feel resigned to the decree of Heaven, and
find such consolation as a life of usefulness may yet have
to offer her."
The man outside dropped from his somewhat constrained position, and the puzzled expression on his face became even more pronounced. But he had heard the voice, though indistinctly, of the minister across the hall, and he went softly around the rear of the house and picking up a small box which lay it the yard, placed it under a. window, of the other room. Looking through the slats, he saw a woman dressed in deepest mourning. Her face was concealed by the heavy crepe veil that fell before it, but her form was shaken by convulsive sobs. Grouped around the room was an audience equally as large as the one across the hal….
The two sermons came to an end almost simultaneously, and again the two audiences were led in prayer.
The Northern Stories of Charles W. Chesnutt p. 212-226