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Lillian A. Chestnut Papers

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Box 1

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Title: Lillian A. Chestnut Papers, 1950-1978

Primary Creator: Chestnut, Lillian A. (1899-1980)

Extent: 0.35 Cubic Feet

Date Acquired: 08/26/2003

Subjects: Black people--Segregation., Communism., King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968., Politics, Practical, Vietnam War, 1961-1975.

Languages: English

This collection consists of Lillian Chestnut's correspondence with various public officials and professionals over the period of 1950-1978. In her letters, she exhibits a radical point of view on topics like Russia and communism. She also discusses Martin Luther King Jr., the Civil Rights Movement, and her opposition to desegregation. Toward the end of the Vietnam War period, Chestnut discusses her opposition to the anti-war demonstrations and her opinions on President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Lillian Chestnut was born in Delaware, Ohio in 1899, while her father was earning his B.S. at Ohio Wesleyan. Upon his graduation, the family moved to Gibsonburg, Ohio, where her father (George D. Smith) served as a high school science teacher and school superintendent. From January 1901 to June 1905, her family lived in Akron, Ohio, where her father headed the science program at Akron High School. In 1906, the family moved to Richmond, KY, when her father joined the science faculty at Eastern Kentucky State Normal School No. 1. By this time, the family included two more girls besides Lillian. Lillian attended Model School and graduated in 1916. From 1921 to 1923, she attended Oberlin Conservatory in hopes of becoming a music missionary to China. While she completed the two year course of study, she did not become a missionary because of her "frail health." She apparently suffered from scoliosis and from an early age, respiratory and heart "weakness." For the next few years, Lillian appears to have taught music in area public schools, but gave that up when she married, Oscar Chestnut, in the later 1920s. During the course of her early marriage, she gave private music lessons, but beginning in the 1940s, the childless Lillian seems to have set her sights on pursuing a literary career and influencing world affairs. Lillian believed that she had the talent to become a published author because in her late teens and early 20s, she had published 50 stories, poems, and articles in normal school and college publications and area newspapers such as the Harlan Enterprise and The State Journal. Thus until her death on September 11, 1980, she spent the majority of her day writing, producing many poems, numerous drafts of a three-part biography of her early life, at least 7 pieces of children's/young adult literature, and more than a dozen articles and booklet-length pieces dealing with world affairs. Because her work was constantly rejected, she took four correspondence writing courses during the 1950s and 60s in hopes of improving her acceptance rates, but to no avail. Lillian's output went well beyond the aforementioned material for publication. She was a prodigious letter-writer. When the War Writers Board began calling in 1943 for citizens to write Congress in support of the war effort, Lillian took the request to heart, so much so that until the end of her life, she claimed that she had worked for the War Writers Board. The war's end only changed the subject of Lillian's letters. Particularly after her husband's death in 1961 from cancer, Lillian wrote letters to U.S. Congressional leaders, U.S. presidents, Secretaries of State, CIA heads, U.N. officials and foreign heads of state expressing her position on civil rights, the Vietnam War, the expansion of communism domestically and overseas, and the end of colonialism in Africa, particularly Rhodesia. Her letters reveal that she was an avid reader who read widely. This habit, however, did not make her open-minded. Rather Lillian was a staunch segregationist and member of the Citizens' Councils of America, which formed in July 1954 in response to the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. She was also an extreme anti-communist and a conservative republican. The latter years of Lillian's life in 1960s and the 1970s could not have been happy ones. Despite renting the upper story of her High Street, Richmond home to EKU faculty or students, she struggled financially, even turning to publishers asking for advances. Her health deteriorated. She spent four to six hours a day on her couch writing long-hand and was unable to type for more than an hour at a time. Most disheartening, her pursuit of publication met with yet more rejection and her letters to numerous public figures brought little but form letters thanking her for her opinion.