CH-FBI Chester B. Himes, File No. 105-2502, Federal Bureau of Investigation
CH-RF Chester Himes Application, Julius Rosenwald Papers, box 421, folder “Chester Himes,” John Hope and Aurelia E. Franklin Library, Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee
CHP-T Chester Himes Papers, Amistad Research Center, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana
CHP-Y Chester Himes Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
CUY Cuyahoga County Court Records, Cleveland, Ohio
CVVP Carl Van Vechten Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
HLM Henry Lee Moon Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio
JC Jack Conroy Papers, Newberry Library, Chicago
JSH Joseph S. Himes Papers, Amistad Research Center, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana
LH Langston Hughes Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
LM Loren Miller Papers, Huntington Library, San Marino, California
LPH Lesley Packard Himes Papers, Amistad Research Center, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana
MF Michel Fabre Papers, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript Archives and Rare Book Library, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia
MHLM Mollie and Henry Lee Moon Papers, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, New York City
ODH Ohio Department of Health, Columbus
RE Ralph Ellison Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
RW Richard Wright Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
SAB Sterling A. Brown Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C.
People
CH Chester B. Himes
CVV Carl Van Vechten
JAW John Williams
WT Willa Thompson
Published Works
ATB-MF As the Twig Is Bent by Joseph Himes, Michel Fabre Papers, box 8, folder 27, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia
CFS Chester Himes. Cast the First Stone. New York: Coward-McCann, 1952
CH-CSS Chester Himes. The Collected Short Stories of Chester Himes. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1990
DCDJ Dear Chester, Dear John: Letters Between Chester Himes and John A. Williams. Edited by John and Lori Williams. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008
HF Hoyt Fuller, “Chester Himes: Traveler on the Long, Rough, Lonely Old Road” [interview], Black World, March 1972, pp. 4–22, 87–98
MLA My Life of Absurdity: The Later Years, the Autobiography of Chester Himes by Chester Himes. 1977. Reprint, New York: Paragon House, 1990
MMH-DCDJ “My Man Himes: An Interview with Chester Himes.” Pp. 179–232 of Dear Chester, Dear John (see above entry)
QH The Quality of Hurt: The Early Years, the Autobiography of Chester Himes by Chester Himes. 1972. Reprint, New York: Paragon House, 1990
TG The Third Generation by Chester Himes. 1954. Reprint, New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1989
Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.
PROLOGUE
xi“the problem of the Twentieth Century”: W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Forethought,” in The Souls of Black Folks, ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Terri Hume Oliver (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 5.
xii“jingle in a broken tongue”: Paul Laurence Dunbar, “The Poet,” in The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1913); Benjamin Brawley, Paul Laurence Dunbar: Poet of His People (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1936), 76–77.
xii“a fighter fights, and a writer writes”: QH, 117.
xiii“if he is not the greatest”: CVV, “Letters of Reference—Chester B. Himes,” CH-RF.
xiii“for sheer intensity of feeling”: M.R., October 25, 1946, AAK.
xiii“nauseated her”: QH, 77.
xiii“We are not accustomed”: Ken McCormick to CH, April 1, 1953, Ken McCormick/Doubleday Papers, box 51, folder “Chester Himes,” Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
1: OLD SCHOOL NEGRO
1by his middle name, Chester: In a second case of Estelle and Joseph naming their children after relatives whose names of official record differed substantially from their colloquial ones, Estelle named her son Chester Bomar after her own father, who never had any name recorded on an official document, whether census or property deed, other than Elias Bomar. But the real irony lay in the fact that she delivered her son on the birthday of John Earle Bomar, the man who had owned her father during much of his twenty-seven years of slavery.
2using the terms “turks” and “brass ankles”: Richard B. Morris, “White Bondage in Ante-Bellum South Carolina,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, October 1948, 194.
2“pedigreed Englishman”: “Estelle’s Notes,” transcribed by Joseph Himes Jr., MF box 8, folder 26.
2a prosperous Spartanburg merchant: Jesse Cleveland, Estate Inventory, December 3, 1851, Deed Book, Spartanburg County, Spartanburg, South Carolina.
2much of the original land: Dr. J. B. O. Landrum, History of Spartanburg County: Embracing an Account of Many Important Events and Biographical Sketches of Statesmen, Divines and Other Public Men and the Names of Many Others Worthy of Record in the History of Their County (Atlanta: Franklin Publishing, 1900), 55, 60.
2valued at $700: Cleveland, Estate Inventory.
3$39,000 worth of “personal property”: “Robt E. Cleveland,” 1860 U.S. Census, South Carolina, Spartanburg District, p. 17.
3the last Cleveland child: “Estelle’s Notes.”
3estimated value was $550: “Theron Earle,” 1840 U.S. Census, South Carolina, Spartanburg County, p. 158; Last Will and Testament of Theron Earle, November 12, 1841, Spartanburg, South Carolina, File 2351, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia.
3an “octoroon”: “Estelle’s Notes.”
4granddaughter of Elisha Bomar: QH, 5.
4“no one ever wielded a more graceful pen”: Landrum, History of Spartanburg, 362.
4stocked with works by Alexander Pope: John Earle Bomar, Inventory, Book J, p. 68, Probate Court Spartanburg County, Spartanburg, South Carolina.
5“white looking”: QH, 4–5.
5“a worse heart-broken”: Tom Moore Craig, Upcountry South Carolina Goes to War (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011), 147.
5$125 for a lot: Melinda Bomar Grantee, A. J. Marshall Grantor, CL #2 E. Morris Street, August 12, 1871, Book G, Deed Book, Dalton County, Georgia, p. 211.
5born on February 23, 1874: Estelle B. Himes, Death Certificate #53275, ODH.
6accepted $103 from Elias: Elias Bomar, Book DDD, Deed Book, Spartanburg County, pp. 552, 554, 574.
6own twenty-seven shares: Petition for the Estate of Thomas Bomar, “Inventory and Appraisement of the Estate of Thos. M. Bomar, Deceased,” Book D, Probate Court, Spartanburg County.
6“We must make this institution”: Leland S. Cozart, A Venture of Faith: Barber-Scotia College, 1867–1967 (Charlotte, N.C.: Heritage Printers, 1976), 12.
7three-fifths—of black teachers: James M. McPherson, The Abolitionist Legacy: From Reconstruction to the NAACP (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975), 274.
7“know the Book”: Catherine Owen Peare, Mary McLeod Bethune (New York: Vanguard, 1951), 58.
7“gave me my very first vision”: Mary McLeod Bethune, interviewed by Charles Johnson, summer 1946, Daniel Mortimer Williams Collection, M95-2, State Library and Archives of Florida.
8“the greater part of the [Negro] race”: Frenise Logan, The Negro in North Carolina, 1876–1894 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1964), 140, quoting from Albert Bushnell Hart, The Nation, March 17, 1892, 208.
8earned a first-cl
ass certificate: Spartanburg Board of Examiners, Book SSS 1891–1892, South Carolina Department of Archives and History.
8Joseph Sandy Himes: Joseph S. Himes, Death Certificate #3825, ODH. The death certificate, completed by G. B. Forbes, gives the birth date as 1874; however, the 1880 U.S. Census, conducted in June of that year, has him as already being seven years old.
9Sandy Neely: “Sandy Neally,” 1870 U.S. Census, Georgia, Washington County, Tennille Township; QH, 5; Fannie Wiggins, Death Certificate #57902, ODH.
9Samuel Robinson: “Samuel Robinson,” 1860 U.S. Census, Georgia, Washington County, Schedule 2, Slave Schedule.
9Elizabeth Hines: “Elizabeth Hines,” Personal Property Tax Records, Washington County, 1872–1877, Tanner’s District 93, Georgia State Archives, Morrow, Georgia.
9came from Londonderry, Ireland: William Neale Hurley, “John William Hines: His Descendants Principally of North Carolina and Virginia and Their Associated Families” [pamphlet] (Bowie, Md.: Heritage, 1995), iii.
9O’Heyne, or O’hEidhin: Ibid., 7. This seems to be the most plausible origin of the Himes surname, particularly since there were numerous people named Hines in the antebellum American South, but only a handful named Heinz. In the United States, there came to be no appreciable distinction between the pronunciation of “Heinz” and “Hines,” and in the South, by African American speakers to white Americans, there were only fairly slight distinctions between “Hines” and “Himes.” Between 1880 and 1920, a variety of public and official documents recorded the family name of Chester Himes’s father as “Hines,” “Hinds,” “Hynes,” “Hymes,” and “Himes.” The 1920 U.S. Census uses “Hinds,” the 1889 Claflin University catalog uses “Hines,” and the 1906 Spartanburg State Court record uses “Hynes.”
9an “ungovernable temper”: TG, 34–35. I have decided to selectively use The Third Generation, particularly the descriptions of the Taylor family in the Deep South, as autobiography. In a letter written in 1973, following the publication of CH’s memoir The Quality of Hurt, a professor from England wrote to him and compared Third Generation with Quality of Hurt, specifically the overlapping passages. CH replied in a rare case of an author unguardedly reflecting on the autobiographical dimensions in fiction and the fictional dimensions of memoir in works written decades apart. He claimed that Third Generation was, with the obvious exception of the conclusion, a more faithful example of autobiography, mainly because he was temporally closer to the first twenty years of his life and able to recall them with more precision when he was writing the novel in 1952 and 1953.
Most of 3rd Gen is true as I remembered my life at the time I was writing it. The last chapter is entirely fictional. . . . The “green paint episode” as you term it, is more likely true in the novel, as are many other things (true to my memory at that time), because the novel was written twenty years before my autobiography which was written after the sharp reality of memory begins to fail. . . . Even now I remember the wrecking of aunt Bee’s (Fannie Wiggins’) car as pure fact. . . .
In the 3rd Gen I was trying to use some of the essential truths of my life, as I remembered them, to write a work of fiction; in my autobiography I was trying to state the unvarnished truth of my life as I remembered it and my publisher would publish it.
CH to Mr. Julie, September 5, 1973, MF.
9racially charged event: Tad Evans, compiler, “Washington County, Georgia, Newspaper Clippings,” vol. 2, 1867–1880, Genealogical Room, Washington County Museum, Sandersville, Georgia, pp. 66–67, 68, 262. The newspaper digests at this historical society show regular evidence of homicidal racial violence in the aftermath of the Civil War.
10owned personal goods: “Sandy Neely,” Personal Property Tax Records, Washington County, 1872–1877, McBride’s District 88, Georgia State Archives.
10Anna Himes died: “Funeral Notice [Mrs. Himes],” box 3, folder 33, HLM.
10a child named Fannie in 1886: Fannie Wiggins, Death Certificate #57902, ODH. The certificate, filled out by Leah, lists Annie Robinson as Fannie’s mother. However, the death notice for “Mrs. Joseph Himes” was retained among Leah’s effects. In 1892, all of the Himes children, led by Leah, were involved in a court petition against Mary Himes to redistribute the estate.
10“well known and highly honored”: Henry Lee Moon, English IIC Composition, March 23, 1917, MHLM, box 6, folder “Glenville High School.”
11On February 4, 1891: Leah Himes and Roddy K. Moon, certificate of marriage, February 4, 1891, box 3, folder 2, HLM.
11Himes entered the first-year normal school: Claflin University catalog, 1889–1890, courtesy of Jennifer Squire.
11“a good moral character”: Blinzy L. Gore, On Hilltop High: The Origin and History of Claflin (Spartanburg, S.C.: Reprint Publishers, 1994), 44.
11a “magnificent actor”: TG, 35.
11“fully committed to Industrial Education”: Gore, On Hilltop High, p. 112.
12“not one in 1,000”: McPherson, The Abolitionist Legacy, 281.
12finished the three-year course: Claflin University catalog, 1893, p. 14; Claflin University Archives, miscellany (typescript list of students in 1893), Orangeburg, South Carolina.
12a standard curriculum: Clyde W. Hall, One Hundred Years of Educating at Savannah State College 1890–1990 (East Peoria, Ill.: Versa Press, 1991), 14.
12Savannah’s 55,268 residents: 1900 U.S. Census, Georgia, Chatham County, Savannah Township.
13“Massa, tell ’em we are rising”: Richard R. Wright Jr., 87 Years Behind the Curtain (Philadelphia: Rare Books, 1965), 17.
14Among Wright’s prized volumes: Ibid., 53.
14“I do not believe in educating”: Ibid., 35.
14“Get up and go!”: Gore, On Hilltop High, 110.
15He ran a commercial blacksmithing: “J.S. Himes, Blacksmith and Wheelwright,” advertisement, Savannah Tribune, 18 November 18, 1905, 2.
16married on June 27, 1901: “A Spartanburg Wedding,” Savannah Tribune, July 6, 1901, 2.
16“popular” young couple: Ibid.
17his Savannah Tribune columns: Linda O. Hines and Allen Jones, “A Voice of Black Protest: The Savannah Men’s Sunday Club, 1905–1911,” Phylon (2d quarter 1973): 195.
17the court granted Estelle one-tenth, $752.04: “Sale Bill,” Estate of Thomas Bomar, Probate Court, Spartanburg County.
17“promptly and satisfactorily done”: “J.S. Himes, Blacksmith” ad.
18“ignorant and narrow-minded”: Booker T. Washington, “One Other Lesson,” Savannah Tribune, July 15, 1905, 2.
18“chased negroes, stoned and shot”: “Orgie of Bloodshed,” Savannah Tribune, September 29, 1906, 1.
18twenty-five African Americans: Charles Crowe, “Racial Massacre in Atlanta, September 22, 1906,” Journal of Negro History (April 1969): 168.
18had to shoulder a rifle: Walter White, A Man Called White (1948; repr., New York: Arno Press, 1969), 5–12.
18paraphrase of the song “Dixie”: Hines and Jones, “A Voice of Black Protest,” 199.
18Black Savannah citizens boycotted: “Separate Seats for Negroes,” Savannah Tribune, September 15, 1906, 1.
19“the Negro was emotional”: Wright, 87 Years Behind, 72.
20parties, which were noticed: “In a Social Way,” Atlanta Tribune, February 8, 1902, 2.
20on August 27, 1907: Minutes of the Board of Trustees, Lincoln Institute, p. 77, Lincoln University Archives/Ethnic Studies Center, Jefferson City, Missouri.
20they agreed to name him Joseph Sandy: Joseph Himes understood his second son to be junior, and either did not know his father’s first name or didn’t acknowledge the custom. Of course, the second son, Joseph Sandy, was properly Joseph Sandy Himes III.
20the strongest college preparatory curriculum: W. Sherman Savage, The History of Lincoln University (Jefferson City, Mo.: Lincoln University, 1939), 124.
21“fundamental idea shall be to combine”: Ibid., 3.
21By 1879 the state had taken over: Henry Sullivan Williams, “The
Development of the Negro Public School in Missouri,” Journal of Negro History (April 1920): 154.
22An “artist at the forge”: TG, 29.
22“fresh and vigorous”: Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice from the South (1892; repr., New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 11.
23“Here in America”: Ibid.
23patrolled the dormitories: Louise Hutchinson, Anna J. Cooper: A Voice from the South (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute, 1981), 83.
23“to be a first class American”: Olin P. Wells, “What It Means to Be an American,” 1914 Senior Class Yearbook, “The Gate to Success,” Lincoln University Archives/Ethnic Studies Center.
23“bad English”: Joseph Himes, taped interview with Michel Fabre, November 15, 1985, MF, box 35.
24open can of paint: CH to Julie, September 5, 1973.
25“All the leading Negroes”: Roddy Moon to Leah Moon, May 1, 1904, HLM, box 3, folder 33.
25Allen fired his old friend: Minutes of the Board of Trustees, Lincoln Institute, p. 188, Lincoln University Archives/Ethnic Studies Center; TG, 42.
25“The automobile has replaced the wagon”: Lincoln University, Fifty-First Annual Catalog, 1922–23, p. 45, Lincoln University Archives/Ethnic Studies Center.
2. THE SOUTHERN CROSSES THE YELLOW DOG
27“lazy Missouri accent”: CH to Yves Malartic, February 26, 1953, MF, box 7, folder 4.
28“protected in all their rights”: “General Alcorn Had a Tough Job,” Mississippi Democrat, December 29, 1965, in “Alcorn, James L.,” clipping file, Vicksburg Public Library, Vicksburg, Mississippi.
28“shielded” the boys: ATB, 4.
28Alcorn had only a quarter: “Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College, 1914–1915,” Alcorn A&M (Natchez, 1915), p. 35.
29turned away a hundred: “Report of the Board of Trustees,” Alcorn State College Archives, RG1, box 1, folder 5 “1912–1913,” Lorman, Mississippi.
29“give the students a thorough mastery”: “Catalogue 1914–1915,” p. 57.
29“the negro dialect”: “Clipping File,” Woodville Republican, June 5, 1918, p. 1, Port Gibson Public Library, Port Gibson, Mississippi.
29“ain’t” was “absolutely prohibited”: ATB, 4.
Chester B. Himes Page 54
