The Marrow of Tradition

This African American writer's racial identity was kept hidden in the 1880s and 1890s, as publishers felt that revealing his ethnicity would repel white readers. His stories are a subtle mix of protest and romanticism, and explore issues of racial injustice in America. Chesnutt himself, the son of North Carolinian free blacks, knew the realities of oppression only too well, and moved to Cleveland in an attempt to escape the terrors of the post-Reconstruction South. Here, he became a lawyer, and in his spare moments penned such classics as The House Behind the Cedars (1900) and The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1899).