Charles W. Chesnutt

Charles W. Chesnutt (1858–1932) was an American writer, lawyer and activist, among the first African American authors of fiction to reach a national audience. Raised in North Carolina, he became a teacher and principal there before moving to Cleveland, where he ran a court stenography business. His stories of Uncle Julius, collected in The Conjure Woman in 1899, and The Wife of His Youth explored slavery, race and the color line. His novels The House Behind the Cedars and The Marrow of Tradition, about the Wilmington massacre of 1898, confronted racism directly.