History of Charles W. Chesnutt

Chesnutt, Charles W. 1858-1932, Writer. Charles Waddell Chesnutt, an Afro-American man of letters, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on 20 June 1858, the son of free blacks who had emigrated from Fayetteville, N.C. When he was eight years old, Chesnutt's parents returned to Fayetteville, where Charles worked part-time in the family grocery store and attended a school founded by the Freedmen's Bureau. In 1872 financial necessity forced him to begin a teaching career in Charlotte, N.C. …

…treated the color line in American life. William L. Andrews University of Wisconsin William L. Andrews, The Literary Career of Charles W. Chesnutt (1980); Helen M. Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line (1952); Frances Richardson Keller, An American Crusade: The Life of Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1978). Source: From ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SOUTHERN CULTURE edited by Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris. Copyright (c) 1989 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher.