We’re delighted to announce that the Charles W. Chesnutt Archive has been awarded a one-year grant from the National Historic Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) to expand its digital edition of Chesnutt’s correspondence with a focus on his life in Cleveland.
The work began in August 2023, and will involve two main sets of activities. Our usual digitization work is one: obtaining digital images, transcriptions, and encodings of Chesnutt’s correspondence, both incoming and outgoing, and writing annotations to help readers get a sense of the context for these letters. The second branch is building relationships in the Cleveland area with individuals, groups, and institutions that have an interest in Cleveland, with an eye to shaping the edition, its priorities and activities in a way that supports people there today.
We’re in conversation right now with folks at the Western Reserve Historical Society (which holds much of the material we’ll be digitizing) and its African American Archives Auxiliary; Lorain County Community College; the Cleveland Public Library; and Case Western Reserve University.
Cohen Lab 