The Marrow of Tradition

Front Cover
Macmillan, 2002 M03 27 - 465 pages
This teaching edition of Charles W. Chesnutt’s 1901 novel about racial conflict in a Southern town features an extensive selection of materials that place the work in its historical context. Organized thematically, these materials explore caste, gender, and race after Reconstruction; postbellum laws and lynching; the 1898 Wilmington riot upon which the narrative is based; and the fin de siecle culture of segregation. The thematic sections are rich with documents such as letters, photographs, editorials, speeches, legal decisions, journalism, and essays from leading periodicals of the era. The writers represented include such well-known figures as W. E. B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, as well as fascinating, half-forgotten characters like the black newspaper editor Alexander Manly and the white supremacist Thomas Dixon. The editors’ introductions and selection headnotes provide additional background for understanding the mythology of race and Chesnutt’s penetrating examination of its mechanisms and consequences.
 

Contents

Cultural and Historical Background
3
Chronology of Chesnutts Life and Times
27
The Marrow of Tradition 1901 Houghton
41
CHAPTER PAGE I AT BREAK OF DAY
44
THE CHRISTENING PARTY
50
THE EDITOR AT WORK
60
THEODORE FELIX
68
A JOURNEY SOUTHWARD
73
Two SOUTHERN GENTLEMEN
167
THE HONOR OF A FAMILY
172
THE DISCOMFORT OF ELLIS
176
THE VAGARIES OF THE HIGHER LAW
179
IN SEASON AND OUT
188
MUTTERINGS OF THE STORM
196
THE MISSING PAPERS
200
THE SHADOW OF a Dream
209

JANET
83
THE OPERATION
86
THE CAMPAIGN DRAGS
93
A WHITE MANS NIGGER
96
PART
97
DELAMERE PLAYS A TRUMP
102
THE BABY AND THE BIRD
108
ANOTHER SOUTHERN PRODUCT
112
THE CAKEWALK
116
THE MAUNDERINGS Of Old Mrs OCHILTREE
120
MRS CARTERET SEEKS AN EXPLANATION
126
ELLIS TAKES A TRICK
130
THE SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF CAPTAIN MCBANE
139
SANDY SEES HIS OWN HANT
147
A MIDNIGHT WALK
150
A SHOCKING CRIME
151
THE NECESSITY OF AN EXAMPLE
155
How NOT TO PREVENT A LYNCHING
158
BELLEVIEW
164
THE STORM BREAKS
213
INTO THE LIONS JAWS
219
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW
224
MINE Enemy O Mine Enemy
227
FIAT JUSTITIA
235
THE SISTERS
242
Caste Race and Gender after Reconstruction
249
Law and Lawlessness
331
Lynch Law in
364
TurnoftheCentury Newspaper Reports on Lynching
377
Jane Addams from Respect for Law
383
The Wilmington Riot
398
Etiquette Spectacle
422
Raleigh News and Observer Is a Race Clash
429
Tom Fletcher from 100 Years of the Negro
435
Frances Benjamin Johnston from The Hampton Album
441
William Dean Howells from A Psychological CounterCurrent
454
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