RPW to Rose Letter 8/5/64 Searchable Text

West Wardsboro, Vermont, August 5, 1964

Mr. Tom Rose,

156 West Newton Street.,

Boston, Massachusetts.

Dear Mr. Rose:

          Late this spring Stokely Carmichael let me have the use of his copy of your unpublished dissertation Negro Student, U.SA.  Now I am writing you for permission to quote some material from it.

          But first I should let you know who I am and what I am doing.  I am a writer – chiefly a novelist I suppose – and a professor at Yale University.  Among my novels are All The King’s Men, World Enough And Time, The Cave, and Flood.  I am now doing a piece of journalism --  I suppose you would call it – to be publisjed (published) in a short version in Look Magazine, and in the full version as a book with Random House.  The basic project is a set of interviews I have done with Negro leaders in different partsof (parts of) the country and at different age levels.  That, of course, is how I camw (came) to know Mr. Carmichael, who has been very helpful to me.  and whose interview is being used in my book.

          Now to what I want from you:  On page 64 there is a letter from Clarence Graham to his parents, explaining why he was about to join a sit-in and go to jail, a very moving document.  In my chapter on interviews with the “young” I should like to quote this as a piece of background material.  May I do so?  I should be very grateful.

          Very sincerely yours,

Robert Penn Warren

P.S.  I should say that in general I have found your dissertation very useful indeed, very valuable.  Is it to be published?