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Charles chesnutt short stories

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Charles W. Chesnutt Biography

Charles Waddell Chesnutt was born on June 20, 1858, and died on November 15, 1932. Chesnutt’s parents were “free persons of color” who left the South before the Civil War. His grandfather was a white slaveholder. Chesnutt was seven-eighths white, but he always identified as African American.

After the Civil War ended, the Chesnutt family returned to North Carolina, where they opened a grocery store, and Charles attended school. Unfortunately, the grocery store eventually failed due to his dad’s bad business sense and the South’s stagnant economy, so Chesnutt became a pupil-teacher when he was fourteen to help support the family.

Once he was an adult, Chesnutt received a promotion to assistant principal and then principal at the African American college now known as Fayetteville State University. After he was married, Chesnutt and his wife moved to New York City to raise a family away from the poverty and racism of the South. Chesnutt chose New York because he wanted to become a writer, but they relocated to Clevelan

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CHESNUTT, CHARLES WADDELL

CHESNUTT, CHARLES WADDELL (20 June 1858-15 Nov. 1932) was an AFRICAN AMERICAN author and lawyer who dealt with sensitive issues, like race, from an African American point of view. Born in Cleveland to Andrew J. and Maria Chesnutt, the family moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina, where the Chesnutts had family ties. Charles graduated from Howard School at 16 and additionally studied German, French, and Greek. He taught himself stenography to make a living. Chesnutt became a teacher in black schools in North Carolina, and at 19 was assistant principal of the New Fayetteville Normal School, and later its principal. He kept a journal, from which he would draw for his writing. Chesnutt returned to Cleveland in 1883; he worked as a stenographer for Judge SAMUEL WILLIAMSON and studied law. He was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1887 and served as a court reporter to support his family and writing.

Chesnutt's literature depicted African Americans as fleshed-out human beings instead of stereotypes or subtypes, as was common in contemporary American li

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Charles W. Chesnutt: A Biographical Sketch

Celebrated for his poignant portrayals of American life in the Reconstruction and Nadir periods, Charles Waddell Chesnutt chronicled with unparalleled insight the intimate and complex web of familial, social, and economic relationships that zigzag across the color line. Chesnutt drew upon his extensive relationships, travels, deep reading, and professional experience to publish across a range of genres, as well as lecturing to audiences both public and private. Early on, writing for Chesnutt became an outlet to negotiate life in the postbellum South, and his prodigious reading of literature both classic and modern influenced his novels and short stories, whose engagement of questions of race and class continue to speak to readers today.

Early Life

Charles W. Chesnutt was born to Andrew Jackson Chesnutt and Maria Sampson Chesnutt in Cleveland, Ohio, on June 20, 1858. Both parents were free people of color from Fayetteville, North Carolina who had left Fayetteville in 1856 for better opportunities in Ohio. Andrew and Maria met while trav