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FREEDOMWAYS 
FOURTH QUARTER 1972

You will pardon my boldness in addressing you, I hope, and let my interest in your work be my excuse. I sometimes wonder if in the rare world of art, earthly conventions need always be heeded. I am drawn to write you because we are both working along the same lines and a sketch of yours in the Monthly Review so interested me that I was anxious to know more of you and your work.

I suppose I must present my credentials, with as little egotism as possible. In the first place I am a writer, one trying to struggle up the thorny path of literature, with the summit of Parnassus not yet in sight. My chief work has been done on the Chicago Record and News, some on the Detroit Free Press. Lately I have had three acceptances from the Century—little things for "The Lighter Vein" department, the first of which was published this month. The New York Independent has accepted a 5000 word story and Kate Field Washington two serious poems. But my regular work is done on the Chicago News for whom I furnish three to four short stories a month. I am hopeful at present both for myself and the future of our race in literature.

I want to know whether or not you believe in preserving Afro-American—I don't like the word—writers those quaint old tales and songs of our fathers which have made the fame of Joel Chandler Harris, Thomas Nelson Page, Ruth McEnery Stuart and others! Or whether you like so many others think we should ignore the past and all its capital literary materials.

I should like to exchange opinions and work with you if you will agree. The counsel and encouragement of one who is striving toward the same end that I am would, I know, greatly help.

I understand you have written for the "Ladies Home Journal". Will you tell me in what numbers I will find your work? I shall always look with interest for anything from your pen.

I enclose to you my verses on Douglass who was a very dear friend of mine, and also my latest lines.

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