The Marrow of TraditionCourier Dover Publications, 2020 M01 15 - 240 pages In this landmark tale, one of the great American novelists exposed the harsh dimensions of Southern prejudice during post–Reconstruction era. Charles W. Chesnutt traces the intertwined lives of two prominent families: one headed by a newspaper editor and flagrant white supremacist; the other by the founder of a hospital for African Americans, whose biracial wife is the unacknowledged half-sister of the editor's wife. Their personal dramas unfold amid an atmosphere of public hysteria that erupts in a massacre — one based on an actual incident. The 1898 race riot of Wilmington, North Carolina, left a considerable number of African Americans dead and expelled thousands more from their homes. Chesnutt drew upon survivors' accounts, including those of members of his own family, for an authentic retelling of the facts. His powerful and passionate exploration of how miscegenation, social rank, and the concept of white supremacy gave rise to Jim Crow laws provides an insightful analysis of racial conflict at the turn of the twentieth century. |
Contents
At Break of Day | 3 |
The Christening Party | 10 |
The Editor at Work | 21 |
Theodore Felix | 29 |
Janet | 45 |
The Operation | 48 |
The Campaign Drags | 56 |
A White Mans Nigger | 60 |
The Necessity of an Example | 125 |
How Not to Prevent a Lynching | 130 |
Belleview | 136 |
Two Southern Gentlemen | 140 |
The Honor of a Family | 146 |
The Discomfort of Ellis | 150 |
The Vagaries of the Higher Law | 154 |
In Season and Out | 164 |
The Baby and the Bird | 73 |
Another Southern Product | 77 |
The Cakewalk | 81 |
The Maunderings of Old Mrs Ochiltree | 86 |
Mrs Carteret Seeks an Explanation | 92 |
Ellis Takes a Trick | 97 |
The Social Aspirations of Captain McBane | 106 |
Sandy Sees His Own Hant | 114 |
A Midnight Walk | 118 |
Mutterings of the Storm | 172 |
The Shadow of a Dream | 187 |
The Storm Breaks | 191 |
Into the Lions Jaws | 198 |
The Valley of the Shadow | 203 |
Mine Enemy O Mine Enemy | 207 |
Fiat Justitia | 215 |
The Sisters | 223 |
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Common terms and phrases
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