Charles Chesnutt

From Dr. Kelley Griffith of Greensboro, NC: "Many works of fiction are by African Americans. One of them, Charles Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition, is about the race "riot" of 1898 or so. Do you know this work? Although it's a work of fiction, the events really took place. Chesnutt does an excellent job of representing the various groups of people, black and white, involved. I wouldn't claim that this is a great novel, like Moby Dick, but it's engaging and thoughtful. The conflict marked the beginning of heavy-handed Jim Crow in N.C. A place worth visiting--far from you but fairly close to me--is the Booker T. Washington National Monument. It's a small national park in a beautiful rural setting in southern Virginia (near Smith Mountain Lake, on the way to Roanoke), a working farm where Washington lived until he was 6. He writes about it in Up from Slavery."