Charles Chestnutt was an African American writer who wrote The Marrow of Tradition. This work of historical fiction sometimes classified as a melodrama. The plot tells the story of the formation of the white supremacist movement that preceded the race riots in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898. Two sisters in a small town are the central characters. One sister is about to have a child. The other sister is a half sister with a slave as her mother. Several other subplots intermingle. Black/white relationships heat up and the local government to threatened to be taken over by force.

Charles Chesnutt was an African American writer. Chesnutt was an early pioneer is writing about African American folklore and racial identity. He wrote about lynchings, segregation and the hypocrisy of American values in the post Civil War South. The stories in The Conjure Woman are written in a frame narrative. The outer frame is told by John a white northerner who bought a vineyard in North Carolina after the Civil War. John and his wife listen to stories told by Julius a former slave who works for them. The stories told by Julius are filled with hauntings, transfiguration, and conjurings....

The Negro Problem is a collection of six historic essays on the state of race relations during the Reconstruction and early twentieth century. Written from the African American point of view these essays show how far race relations have progressed, and how far we have yet to go. Included are: Industrial Education for the Negro by Booker T. Washington The Talented Tenth by W.E. Burghardt DuBois The Disfranchisement of the Negro by Charles W. Chesnutt The Negro and the Law by Wilford H. Smith The Characteristics of the Negro People by H.T. Kealing Representative American Negroes by Paul...

"Contexts" presents a wealth of materials chosen by the editors to enrich the reader's understanding of these canonical stories, including a map of the landscape of the conjure tales, Chesnutt's journal entry as he began writing fiction of the South, as well as writings by Chesnutt, William Wells Brown, and Paul Laurence Dunbar, among others, on the stories' central motifs--folklore, superstition, voodoo, race, and social identity in the South following the Civil War "Criticism" is divided into two parts. "Early Criticism" collects critical notices forThe Conjure Woman that suggest...

The Norton Critical Edition text is based on the 1901 first edition. It is accompanied by a note on the text, Werner Sollors's insightful introduction, explanatory annotations, and twenty-four photographs and illustrations "Contexts" connects the novel to the historical events in Wilmington and includes a wealth of newspaper articles, editorials, and biographical sketches of the central players The account of riot instigator Alfred Moore Waddell, published just weeks after the event, is reprinted, along with three rarely seen letters: W. E. B. Du Bois's and Booker T. Washington's comments on...