Dear Mr. Charles W. Chesnutt,

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, I am a graduate of the Ph.D program at Harvard College. I recently read your article, Mr. Chesnutt, titled, "What is a White Man?" I was wholeheartedly intrigued by your discussions on who qualifies as white, and how the idea of blackness is constructed in varying states. You know, a great concern of mine has always been that I am consistently viewed as a problem because of my race—because I am a Negro. Yet, being a Negro, I view myself as American as well. Unfortunately, in your analysis of these states’ laws regarding authenticity and interracial marriages, I am not an American, considering my rights are not the same as the white American, and it certainly varies according to state.

Being an intellectual, I did some research on your own identity—and I was surprised to read that you can be considered seven-eighths white, and one-eighth black. So, in many states, including South Carolina, you would be considered a white man. What strikes me however is that you look relatively white, yet you identify as a Negro like myself. Yet, I find it difficult to fathom that you would face the same challenges that Negroes have faced. And indubitably, you would find it a challenge to abstaining from bleaching your Negro soul when much of your appearance is already white. Thus, while you have Negro blood in you, your message for the world may be less poignant when your experiences in life have been made less burdensome by the privilege of your appearance and may face less of the challenges I faced in being considered a problem and not American.

Nevertheless, I am pleased to have read your comprehensive coverage of different states' qualifications for whiteness. It was interesting to read that juxtaposed with my own analysis of the Freedmen's Bureau. If you did not know already, the Freedmen's Bureau ultimately failed to continue because of a nation’s hesitance to address the needs of free Negroes and a people’s inability to reconcile that slavery had been abolished in the books, though not necessarily in the mind. As you know already, the Freedmen’s Bureau was met with hostility primarily by white Southerners because of the aid it provided to former slaves and because of the fact that former slaveholders had to reluctantly (or not at all!) confront their ex-slaves as free men. Race was clearly an issue with the Bureau because those who qualify as white looked down upon and still scorned those who were not even after Emancipation had been officially established.

Thus, for me, I am most concerned about the power of these laws in the lived experiences of the Negro. You say that state laws determined whiteness based on blood, but the lived experiences of folks do not necessarily align with what the law demands. Just as with the lived experiences of black folks do not align with what Emancipation had anticipated and the Freedmen's Bureau had intended. With that, I bid you farewell, Mr. Chesnutt. I hope to hear your thoughts on my musings very soon.

Signed,
W.E.B. DuBois

Questions
1) How do the various laws for whiteness and blackness as described in Chesnutt's "What is a White Man?" complicate the issue of authenticity?
2) If the problem of the twentieth century is the color line, how do you think the Freedmen's Bureau addressed that problem? Though the "Freedmen's Bureau died," how do you think it altered the relations between white and black? How did it clarify the role of the law regarding treatment of African Americans? What does this say about blacks being American, an issue W.E.B. DuBois also raises in Chapter One?