ALFRED E. MARLING
CHAIRMAN

B. H. FANCHER
TREASURER

JOHN R. MOTT
GENERAL SECRETARY

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

The International Committee of Young Men's Christian Associations

347 Madison Avenue, New York

COLORED MEN'S DEPARTMENT

Mr. E. P. Toomer,
1341 You St., N. W.,
Washington, D. C.

My dear Mr. Toomer:

July 19, 1922

I was indeed glad to see you at Harper's Ferry and I
cannot tell you how happy I am over the fellowship it was ours
to have. I am much pleased with the splendid, clear-cut conclu-
sions at which you have arrived in your thinking and I write to
urge that you take care to put into proper form your observations
regarding the Southern situation. With all that has been said
there is not a truly philosophical statement of that situation
on record. Every White man and every Colored man practically
loses his case by suiting his arguments to some quick and tempo-
rary abatement. I have been interested in reading again the
story of the good Samaritan. It was perfectly fine to serve that
unfortunate man who fell among thieves. That we shall always do
but that is the most some people ever do if they do that. It is
a much bigger job to clean out the robbers and that takes a long
time.

Your statement to my mind is fundamental first recog-
nizing the situation as it is and then fully realizing that it
is going to take a long time. Colored people are liable to delay
it by trying to force an oak tree in gourd time to growth and
White people are liable to say it never can be done. Both are
absolutely wrong. Wont you do this piece of work? If I can be
of service to you in any way I shall be happy to render it.
Please let me hear from you at your early convenience.

With best wishes, I am

JEM-ERR

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

1341 You Street, N.W.,
Washington, D.C.,
23 July 1922.

Dear Mr Moorland,

Your kind letter was somewhat tardily forwarded to
me at the Ferry. As there was but a few days delay in it, I've
waited until my return home to answer.

A work such as you suggest is certainly needed. The shallow observations and loose thinking which have hitherto formed the bulk matter written about the Negro are now in a position to do a double injury. They were unfortunate when public interest was at a low ebb. How much more so are they at the present time, in this decade which is witnessing a quickened interest, every man for his brother, especially every white man for his colored neighbor! This thought has often urged me in the direction of scientific statement. I'd love to write a volume whose foundations rested on a thorough training in social and biological science. But this would take years of special study, and a whole reshaping of my life. While this course is hardly practical, it should be possible for me to tone down my desires to a modest work, which, while claiming nothing in the way of scholarship, realizes those fundamentals of vision and observation that you have heard me express.

By way of refreshing and strengthening myself against
the possibility of such a volume, I have thought of again making a
short trip south. Not to Georgia this time. Georgia is too far, and
too expensive. Possibly one of the Carolinas. What I want is the
bite and crudity of pure Negro-white southern life. A fresh contact
of this nature would give my work an immediacy and vigor which could
come to it in no other way. Do you know anything of either North or
South Carolina? Of a small town, not entirely outlawed from civiliza-
tion, yet sufficiently remote to be representative of its kind?
Of any people or single home that would recieve me without undue
attention being given that fact? Anything that you can tell me will
be of fine service.

Your interest in the evolution and individual express-
ion of the race's youth is deep and fine act. If our lives lead
away (and above) the beaten materialist track, too often are we left
alone until what we have to say shrivels within us, and our weakened
bodies take up some indifferent burden which, in the end, leaves us
not an inch in advance of the point attained by our forefathers. This
should not be so. And it will not be so if we can get the support of
those who have made their way, of those who immediately precede us.

Both in a general and in a personal way, I thank you.

PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED

ALFRED E. MARLING
CHAIRMAN

B. H. FANCHER
TREASURER

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

347 Madison Avenue, New York

COLORED MEN'S DEPARTMENT

Mr. E. P. Toomer,
1341 You Street, N. W.,
Washington, D. C.

My dear Mr. Toomer:

Your good letter of July 28th just received. I have read it with great interest and have written President R. S. Wilkerson, State College, Orangeburg, S. C. and enclose copy of letter. President Wilkerson is a native South Carolinian, an Oberlin man, and keen and alert to questions in which we are mutually interested.

I believe South Carolina would afford a more typical field for what you desire than North Carolina. The conditions in South Carolina would most likely be more akin to those in the deeper South. Along the seaboard rice plantation sections I am sure you would be able to see something worth while.

I am greatly encouraged with your spirit and attitude and I trust somehow you will be able to make the contribution I am sure you have to make in the not distant future and then it may still be yours to make that greater contribution which you mention. I covet the privilege some day of being near enough to encourage you and if in any way possible aid you. I shall most likely, after the next year, give the balance of my life to some such constructive work as will bring me in touch in a very positive way with our younger leaders. I am happy to count you my friend and I ever want you to count me the same.

You will do me no injury by letting me hear from you as often as you may desire. As soon as I get word from Mr. Wilkerson I will let you know. I shall be taking my vacation in August and things may be quiet until I return in September.

With every good wish, I am

Very truly yours,

July 31, 1922.

Disclosure.

ERR-ERR

7/29/22

C O P Y

for information Mr Jean Toomer

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

President's Office

STATE AGRICULTURAL AND MECHANICAL COLLEGE,
Orangeburg, S. C.

August 5, 1922.

Dr. J. E. Moorland,
347 Madison Ave.,
New York City.

My dear Dr. Moorland:- Your letter of July thirty-first.

I would be pleased to cooperate in the mission and
desire of your young friend Mr. Toomer, and shall take
the matter under consideration, while making a survey
of strategic points in South Carolina when his study
may be the most profitable.

I have in mind several places in the upper part of South
Carolina, namely:- Greenwood, Greenville, and Spartanburg
where I think his plans could be carried out. This
section of the State offers material from one point of
view, namely:- antithesis, - while Charleston, Beaufort,
Columbia, Orangeburg and Sumter in the lower part of the
State represent sympathy. Whichever ideal he wishes to
study may be had by local arrangement. Upon hearing from
you I shall be pleased to select a point of observation
and in a measure arrange his accommodations.

With best wishes,

RSW/LT.

ALFRED E. MARLING
CHAIRMAN

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

347 Madison Avenue, New York.

COLORED MEN'S DEPARTMENT

Mr. Eugene Toomer,
1341 You Street, N. W.,
Washington, D. C.

December 4, 1922.

Dear Mr. Toomer:

I have been rather expecting you would drop in to see me some day. I wonder if you have made your trip to New York and if not, when are you coming? It would be a real pleasure to have you spend an evening with us when we would not be interrupted.

I have read thru "City Block" and I am re-reading some of it. I am trying to get at the author's meaning. I am not sure whether he is attempting to give a description of the majority life in a city block or whether he has, for his own artistic purpose, selected certain characters which readily lend themselves to the description and interpretation of life which he desired to portray. I appreciate the spiritual note which runs thru the entire book. He has in a most remarkable way delineated the spiritual thread, power and force controlling the material substances. Of course, as you have said in a recent letter, this book is not for immature minds but it is a good study for those who love to think deeply on human behavior and relationships. He renders the service so much needed today of describing things as they are and not as somebody thinks they ought to be. It is evidently a literary voice crying in the wilderness to make literature as truthful and real on a broad plain as science attempts to be either in the field of normal conditions or those which are purely pathological.

I have read the comments of literary critics on the author again and again with unusual interest and I shall go over pages, paragraphs, and chapters of the book with a view of getting at more fully the author's great and powerful underlying meaning. The things in the book which prudery would taboo are inconsequential so far as I am concerned. The thing which this author is attempting to get at is very interesting to me and I wish it would be my privilege some time to meet him and talk with him. I am not personally interested so much in a great piece of architecture as I am in thinking of the Sir Christopher Wren back of the wonderful, material expression -- of the creative genius of his overflowing soul. And so, I am deeply concerned today about just what part the normal spiritual power is to play in this heavily insulated materialistic period in which we live.