All Scholars

Helen Maria Chesnutt was the second daughter of the acclaimed African American novelist Charles Chesnutt (1858-1932) and Susan Utley Perry (1861-1940) who were married on June 6, 1878. When the family moved to Cleveland, she and her elder sister Ethel entered Central High School and both girls took the classical course. Central High School was not only Cleveland’s oldest school with a serious commitment to traditional education, but also the first free public high school west of the Alleghenies. By 1918, the school would have four full-time Latin teachers on its staff. Helen graduated in June of 1897, and in the fall, she joined her sister as her roommate at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She earned her B.A. from Smith College in 1902 and was the third black student to graduate.

Documents from the archives at Smith College tell us that both Helen and Ethel took four years of Latin and one of Greek. Helen herself took upper-level courses in French and Italian. Her professional career was spent almost entirely in Cleveland where she taught Latin at her alma mater, Central High School. She worked with vigor to bring her classroom alive and stimulated her students by engaging them in projects such as the bi-millennial celebrations of Vergil’s birth in 1930. In the fall of 1925, Chesnutt earned an M.A. in Latin from Columbia University. In 1932, she co-authored a beginning Latin textbook with Martha Olivenbaum and Nellie Rosebaugh titled The Road to Latin. The book was a success, and after its initial publication by John C. Winston Company, it was published again in 1938, 1945, and 1949. Helen joined the American Philological Association in 1920 (TAPA 51 (1920): vi) and the evidence at this point indicates that she was the first black woman to have done so.

Helen devoted her life to teaching and never married. She died August 7, 1969 in Cleveland. Her body was buried in the family plot in Cleveland’s Lake View Cemetery.