Charles Chesnutt's contributions to nineteenth century local color fiction

Chestnutt

How did Charles Chesnutt contribute to the local color fiction of the nineteenth century with stories of their respective regions?

Charles Chestnutt

How did Charles Chesnutt contribute to the local color fiction of the nineteenth century?

The central thesis that will be explored in this paper is that the works of Charles Chestnut were important in raising awareness and concern for the negative aspects of racial inequality and prejudice. The response to racial issues in the United States that we find in his work was an important contribution to the documentation and struggle against racial injustice and bias in the country.

Charles Chestnutt, who is widely recognized as one of the important early African-American novelists, was born in 1858 in Cleveland, Ohio. (Charles W. Chestnutt) He was deeply concerned and distressed about the situation and social conditions of African-Americans at the time in the country. His working and professional career was varied. He began his working as a school principle and was a pupil teacher when he was only fourteen years. (Charles W. Chestnutt)

He later became an attorney and started a successful stenography business. At the same time be began writing in order to address the race issue in the country.

He was particularly concerned with the resurgence of white supremacy in the South of the country. (Charles W. Chestnut: A Brief Biography) This is also related to the fact that his family came from North Carolina.

His publishing career included numerous essays as well as two collections of short stories, three novels and a biography of Frederick Douglass. In many of his works he "…used familiar scenes of folk life to protest social injustice." (Charles W. Chestnutt) Chestnut also increased the awarenss of racial inequality and bias by publishing a number of sketches and essays in newspapers and magazines. He was also the "…first African-American fiction writer to appear in the Atlantic Monthly." (Charles W. Chestnut: A Brief Biography) Among his essays were titles such as, "What is a White Man?" published in the New York Independent on May 4, 1889 and "The Disenfranchisement of the Negro," which was published in 1903. (Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2004)

The two short story collections that he published were titled The Conjure Woman and The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line. However, the sales of his two novels, The House Behind the Cedars (1900) and The Marrow of Tradition (1901), were not encouraging. The latter novel was inspired by the Wilmington race riot in 1898. (Charles W. Chestnut: A Brief Biography) Despite this he continued to write and published another novel entitled The Colonel's Dream in 1905; which criticized the convict-lease system. Throughout his works he continued to raise awarenss about racial inequality and injustice until his death in 1932.

An assessment of his total body of work shows that his novels, short stories and essays constitute an important contribution to the struggle for equal rights and formed part of the increasing awareness of racial injustice in the United States. As one commentator notes:

The novels and short stories of Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932) earned him a prominent place in American literary history. He also wrote many essays and newspaper articles in which he spoke out strongly against serious injustices committed against African-Americans, including lynching practices and disenfranchisement. (Charles W. Chestnutt)

The above quotation can be related to his own insights into the reasons for his writing. In his journal he stated that;