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Black History Month would be the perfect time for people in North Carolina to discover one of our heroes from the literary world.
We are speaking of Charles W. Chesnutt, an author, essayist and educator who is one of the United States’ most important, early African-American writers. Chesnutt (June 20, 1858 - Nov. 15, 1932) is for whom the main library is named at Fayetteville State University. In 2008, he was made the star of his own postage stamp.
Yet, many people in North Carolina do not know of him.
Chesnutt was born in Cleveland, the son of two formerly enslaved black people who had moved from Fayetteville. In 1866, when Chesnutt was a young boy, his family moved back to Fayetteville, and his father opened a grocery store. Chesnutt served as an assistant principal and then principal at the State Colored Normal School, an early version of FSU, from 1877 to 1883. The university archives have a collection of documents related to Chesnutt, including letters, pictures, greeting cards, newspaper stories and tax records.
His writing skills were self-taught. He published his major works after he moved back to Cleveland, but their subject matter revolved around what he experienced and observed in the South, including the rigid color line. Patesville, a fictional town he wrote about in “The House Behind the Cedars,” is a clear reference to Fayetteville.
Chesnutt wanted to support his family only as a writer but found it difficult. He would later pass the bar in Ohio and start a financially successful court-reporting business.
But it is his writing that stands the test of time. He is considered the first black novelist to gain national, critical acclaim, preceding by several years the Harlem Renaissance.
Professor William L. Andrews, who wrote a book about Chesnutt’s literary career, describes him as “an important contributor to the deromanticizing trend in post-Civil War southern literature and a singular voice among turn-of-the-century realists who treated the color line in American life.”
If you want a Charles W. Chesnutt “starter kit,” below are three titles we would suggest:
“The Conjure Woman” (1899) — Chesnutt’s most celebrated work, this is a collection of short stories that weave together folklore, hoodoo and Southern culture, as viewed through the tales of the formerly enslaved. It is written in dialect, but we encourage you to stick with it; you will catch the rhythm of the work after a while.
“The House Behind the Cedars” (1900) — This is a story of “passing,” the intricacies and tragedy of the practice, woven around the story of heroine Rena and her brother, John, two mixed-race siblings.
“The Marrow of Tradition” (1901) — It is a fictionalized account of what became known as the “race riots” in 1898 in Wilmington, in reality an insurrection where enraged whites overthrew the government comprising African Americans and liberal whites and destroyed black businesses and property.
The Fayetteville Observer, a Gannett publication
This article originally appeared on Times-News: Editorial: Get acquainted with one of North Carolina’s literary heroes
