A Recovered Early Letter by Charles Chesnutt |
A Recovered Early Letter by Charles Chesnutt
American Literary Realism
Volume 40, Number 2 (Winter, 2008)
pages 180-182
DOI: 10.1353/alr.2008.0006
Randall Gann
University of New Mexico
In the preface to the first volume of their edition of Charles Chesnutt’s letters, Joseph McElraih and Robert Leitz III contend that Chesnutt “was among the most visible figures . . . testing the commercial viability of African-American authorship at the turn of the [twentieth] century.” In a letter to Houghton, Mifflin & Co. dated 8 September 1891, however, Chesnutt downplayed his racial heritage: In his case, he insisted, “the infusion of African blood is very small—is not in fact a visible admixture.” And in a recently discovered letter signed with a pseudonym—the earliest extant personal letter he sent anyone—Chesnutt both hid his biracial identity and seized the opportunity to vent his frustrations. Because this was a private letter, not intended for publication, it provides additional evidence that Chesnutt wanted to hide or at least obscure his racial identity.
In an article entitled “The Color Line” in Kate Field’s Washington for 19 December 1894, Field editorialized on a controversy over the admission of a black woman to the Chicago Woman’s Club. Although virtually unknown today, Kate Field (1838-1896) was the most prominent female journalist in the United States during the last half of the nineteenth century. She was a contributor to the early issues of the Atlantic Monthly and had numerous articles printed in the New York Tribune between 1866 and 1889. In her essay. Field argued that “Because men’s clubs draw the color line is the very reason why women should set their brothers a good example by displaying a more catholic spirit. . . . Were Christ to walk on earth he would assuredly make no distinction between while and black.” Chesnutt responded to Field’s editorial in a letter published in the paper a few weeks later but hitherto lost t0 scholarship:…
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Tags: American Literary Realism, Charles Chesnutt, Charles W. Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt, Randall Gann