Major Carteret is the white owner of the biggest newspaper in Wellington, a racially segregated city in the post-Civil War South. Carteret, along with other powerful white men in Wellington, are outraged that an editorial published the town's black newspaper has questioned the justification for lynchings. As racial tension mounts, Carteret struggles on the domestic front. His wife and child are unwell and his niece, Clara, is courted by Tom Delamer, a lush aristocrat. Meanwhile, William...
A pioneer in the development of fiction giving voice to the African-American experience, Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858–1932) found literary success with his «conjure tales» — vignettes from black folk life, recounted partially in the vernacular — and later with his «stories of the color line,» which addressed more directly the problems of race in America.This outstanding, affordable volume presents a selection of the best of both conjure and color line tales. Ten...
