Scope and Content Note
The papers of William Allen White (1868-1944) span the years 1859-1944, with the bulk of the material from 1899 to 1944. The collection consists almost entirely of correspondence and relates to White's personal life and career as editor of the Emporia Gazette who figured prominently in public affairs nationally and in Kansas. The letters range from requests from autograph collectors and comments on editorials appearing in the Emporia Gazette that White edited to his voluminous and significant correspondence with each president from Theodore Roosevelt to Franklin D. Roosevelt. The collection is arranged in six series: Family Correspondence , Letterbooks , General Correspondence , Special Correspondence , Miscellany , and Addition .
The major aspects of White's career as a politician, newspaper editor, and author are richly illuminated in his correspondence. In the area of politics, there is correspondence concerning both the national and local scenes. There is also a great deal of material concerning White's attempt to win elective office when he ran as an independent candidate for governor of Kansas in 1924. This segment of the papers contains information as well about his fight against the rising influence in the state of the Ku Klux Klan. His pervasive influence in the politics of Kansas is revealed in correspondence with Governors Henry Justin Allen, Arthur Capper, Edward W. Hoch, George H. Hodges, Alfred M. Landon, Ben Paulen, Clyde Reed, Walter R. Stubbs, Payne Ratner, and Frank Carlson. Other political figures from Kansas with whom he was closely allied are Joseph Dolley, Joseph Little Bristow, Victor Murdock, and Edward H. Rees. Of particular significance is White's correspondence with Henry Justin Allen, Arthur Capper, Alfred M. Landon, and Victor Murdock. Allen accompanied White overseas during World War I as an observer for the American Red Cross and shared equal billing with him in White's novel, The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me. Correspondence with Landon shows White's influence in the shaping of his political philosophy.
The most numerous of White's presidential correspondence is with Theodore Roosevelt, which reveals the part played by White during the election of 1912, when he temporarily broke from the Republican Party to participate in the Bull Moose campaign as a national committeeman and chairman of publicity for Roosevelt.
Writers represented in the papers include Hamlin Garland, Upton Sinclair, H. L. Mencken, Carl Sandburg, William Rose Benét, Ida M. Tarbell, Oswald Garrison Villard, Mark Sullivan, Drew Pearson, and Walter Lippmann. Of particular interest is White's correspondence with Harry Kemp and Edna Ferber. Kemp's letters cover the years 1909 to 1919 and offer a view of the author's development from his first publication, a four-act play titled Judas (New York, M. Kennerley, 1913), up to the eve of the publication of Chanteys and Ballads (New York, Brentano's [circa 1920]). Ferber was a friend and confidante of White, and her letters, beginning in 1912 extend throughout the correspondence.
As one of the judges appointed to the original panel of the Book-of-the-Month Club when it was founded in 1926, White participated in the selection of books until his death. There is much correspondence with the club's founder, Harry Scherman; its directors, Robert Haas and Meredith Wood; and with his fellow judges, Clifton Fadiman, Christopher Morley, Amy Loveman, and Henry Seidel Canby. There is an abundance of correspondence with Dorothy Canfield Fisher, little of which is concerned with the book club's activities.
The day-to-day business of editing and managing a small-town daily newspaper was White's main concern. Correspondence with newspapermen such as Henry Haskell, Roy Roberts, Roy Bailey, Medill McCormick, Arthur H. Sulzberger, and Josephus Daniels is voluminous. There are many letters exchanged with the Associated Press, the only wire service furnishing news for the Gazette, and papers related to White's work with the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
Among others who are well represented in the papers are William Smith Culbertson, a native of Emporia who had a distinguished diplomatic career and whose papers are also located in the Library; the cartoonist Jay N. (“Ding”) Darling; architect Frank Lloyd Wright; Kansas artist John Steuart Curry; psychiatrist Karl Menninger; Walter White and Roy Wilkins of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; and various chancellors of Kansas State University during the time White served as a regent, 1900-1913. Throughout the papers are letters from persons writing of their responses to White's editorial tribute to his daughter, Mary White, who was killed in a horseback riding accident in 1921.
Family correspondence includes the letters of White's wife, Sallie, and his son, William Lindsay White, who succeeded him as editor of the Gazette.
A section of chronologically arranged correspondence relates to White's chairmanship of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, 1940-1941; arrangements for his speaking engagements, 1924-1943, and papers concerning the internal workings of the Gazette, such as subscriptions, orders for paper stock, and advertising.
A small Miscellany series contains carbon copies of newspaper editorials and articles, financial records, address lists, bills and receipts, and printed matter. An addition consists of a few items of correspondence.