The Marrow of Tradition

by Chesnutt, Charles W.; Sundquist, Eric J.

• ISBN13: 9780140186864
• ISBN10: 0140186867
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781101199381
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1993-02-01
• Publisher: Penguin Classic
• More Book Details

Summary

This teaching edition of Charles W. Chestnutt's 1901 novel about racial conflict n a southern town features an extensive selection of materials that place the work in its historical context. The documents include letters, photographs, editorials, speeches, legal decisions, journalism, and essays by writers such as W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Author Biography

Charles W. Chestnutt (1858–1932) was born in Cleveland, Ohio, where his family had moved from Fayettefille, North Carolina, to seek better economic opportunities. Shortly after the Civil War, they returned to Fayetteville, where Chesnutt spent most of his childhood and young adulthood. He taught in local public schools, eventually returning to Cleveland and being admitted to the bar. He established a legal stenography business yet found himself strongly attracted to writing fiction. He published two collections of short stories, The Conjure Woman and The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1890) and three widely reviewed novels, The House Behind the Cedars (1900), The Marrow of Tradition (1901), and The Colonel's Dream (1905), while devoting essays and speeches to agitation for civil rights for African Americans, especially in the South. Unable to support his family as a full-time writer, he resumed his business career but maintained until his death a respected role in African American letters.

Eric J. Sundquist is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at the Johns Hopkins University, where he teaches courses about American literature and culture. His books include King’s Dream: The Legacy of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech and Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America. Professor Sundquist has also edited essay collections on Mark Twain, Ralph Ellison, and W. E. B. Du Bois.

Table of Contents

About the Series
About This Volume
About the Text
List of Illustrations
The Marrow of Tradition: The Complete Text	p. 1
Introduction: Cultural and Historical Background	p. 3
Chronology of Chesnutt's Life and Times	p. 27
The Marrow of Tradition [1901 Houghton Mifflin Edition]	p. 41
The Marrow of Tradition: Cultural Contexts	p. 247
Caste, Race, and Gender after Reconstruction	p. 249
from The Plantation Negro as a Freeman	p. 255
from The Negro Question in the South	p. 262
from An Imperative Duty	p. 269
The Atlanta Exposition Address	p. 274
from The Future American	p. 278
from The Conservation of Races	p. 288
from Birth Reform, from the Positive, Not the Negative, Side	p. 299
from Women and Economics	p. 304
from The Intellectual Progress of the Colored Women	p. 313
from Service by the Educated Negro	p. 322
Law and Lawlessness	p. 331
Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution	p. 338
from The Freedman's Case in Equity	p. 340
from Plessy v. Ferguson	p. 353
Suffrage and Eligibility to Office, Article VI, the North Carolina State Constitution	p. 362
from Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases	p. 364
Turn-of-the-Century Newspaper Reports on Lynching	p. 377
Lynched Negro and Wife First Multilated	p. 378
Victim's Family Begs to See Negro Burned	p. 381
Negro Tortured by Illinois Mob	p. 382
from Respect for Law	p. 383
from A Race Riot, and After	p. 385
from Speech before the U.S. House of Representatives	p. 394
The Wilmington Riot	p. 398
Editorial	p. 405
Letter to the Atlanta Constitution	p. 409
from White Man's Declaration of Independence	p. 411
Letter to William McKinley	p. 414
from An Account of the Race Riot in Wilmington, N.C.	p. 417
Segregation as Culture: Etiquette, Spectacle, and Fiction	p. 422
Is a Race Clash Unavoidable?	p. 429
from The Cotton States and International Exposition Program	p. 432
from 100 Years of the Negro in Show Business	p. 435
from The Hampton Album	p. 441
Literary Memoranda	p. 443
Po' Sandy	p. 444
from A Psychological Counter-Current in Recent Fiction	p. 454
Selected Bibliography	p. 458
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