Full Description
Inspired by the 1898 Wilmington Riot and the eyewitness accounts of Charles W. Chesnutt's own family, Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition captures the astonishing moment in American history when a violent coup d'état resulted in the subversion of a free and democratic election.
The Norton Critical Edition text is based on the 1901 first edition. It is accompanied by a note on the text, Werner Sollors's insightful introduction, explanatory annotations, and twenty-four photographs and illustrations.
"Contexts" connects the novel to the historical events in Wilmington and includes a wealth of newspaper articles, editorials, and biographical sketches of the central players.
The account of riot instigator Alfred Moore Waddell, published just weeks after the event, is reprinted, along with three rarely seen letters: W. E. B. Du Bois's and Booker T. Washington's comments on the novel and Walter Hines Page's letter to Chesnutt. Rounding out the historical record is a selection of 1890s sheet music, a poem, and newspaper articles on the Cakewalk, a popular dance of the period with roots in slavery.
"Criticism" begins with twelve contemporary reviews, including those by Hamilton Wright Mabie, Katherine Glover, William Dean Howells, and Sterling A. Brown. Fifteen recent assessments focus on the novel's characters, history, realism, and violence. As scholarship on The Marrow of Tradition and on Wilmington in 1898 has been especially active since the 1990s, ten assessments are from this period.
A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
Contents
Introduction by Werner Sollors
Charles W. Chesnutt's Own View of His New Story, The Marrow of Tradition (1901)
Acknowledgments The Text of The Marrow of Tradition
Contexts
FAMILY BACKGROUND
Frances Richardson Keller o [Chesnutt's Parents]
SELECTED LETTERS
To Walter Hines Page, Nov. 11, 1898
To Walter Hines Page, Mar. 22, 1899
To Booker T. Washington, Oct. 8, 1901
To Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Oct. 26, 1901
From Booker T. Washington, Oct. 28, 1901
To Booker T. Washington, Nov. 16, 1901
To Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Dec. 30, 1901
To William Monroe Trotter [Jan. 1902]
From W. E. B. Du Bois to Houghton Mifflin, Mar. 8, 1902
To Mrs. W. B. Henderson, Nov. 11, 1905
LITERARY MEMORANDA
Charles W. Chesnutt o [Plot Notes]
Sample Pages from Chesnutt's Hand-Corrected Proof Sheets of The Marrow of Tradition
ESSAYS
From The Courts and the Negro
From What Is a White Man?
The White and the Black
The Disfranchisement of the Negro
THE 1898 WILMINGTON RIOT
Rebecca Latimer Felton, Alexander L. Manly, and the Daily Record Editorial
John E. Talmadge o [Biographical Sketch of Mrs. Felton]
Rebecca Latimer Felton o Mrs. Felton Speaks
Biographical Sketch of Alex Manly
Alex Manly o Editorial
From Cause of Carolina Riots
The North Carolina Race Conflict
From Takes Mrs. Felton to Task for Speech
Mrs. W. H. Felton's Reply to Dr. Hawthorne's Attack
Nov. 10, 1898: A Day of Blood
North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources o Wilmington Race Riot Draft Report
1898 Wilmington Riot Commission o Findings
Hell Jolted Loose
White Declaration of Independence Negro Rule Ended, Washington Post (Nov. 11, 1898)
The Riot at Wilmington, Washington Post (Nov. 22, 1898)
A Forgotten Issue, Boston Globe (Nov. 20, 1898)
Is It Negro Rule? Independent (Nov. 24, 1898)
The South and Negro Suffrage, New-York Tribune (Nov. 25, 1898)
Portrait of Alfred Moore Waddell
Alfred Moore Waddell o The Story of the Wilmington, N.C., Race Riot, Collier's Weekly (Nov. 26, 1898)
Black Side of the Race Issue, Washington Post (Dec. 4, 1898)
The Wilmington Riot, Cleveland Gazette (Dec. 10, 1898)
Letter by a Negro Woman to President William McKinley (Nov. 13, 1898)
African Americans Killed or Wounded
Men Banished from Wilmington during and after the November 10 Violence
The Wilmington Riot, Chesnutt's Relatives, and African American Fiction
Sylvia Lyons Render o [Violence]
Richard Yarborough o Violence, Manhood, and Black Heroism
THE CAKEWALK
Sheet Music from the 1890s
Dusky Dinah: Cake-Walk and Patrol
Sambo at the Cake Walk
Remus Takes the Cake
Way Down South: Characteristic March, Cake-Walk and Two-Step
Cakewalk in the Contemporary Press
A Negro Festival, New-York Tribune (July 20, 1870)
A Cake Walk, San Francisco Chronicle (Oct. 6, 1873)
H. S. Keller o The Cake Walk," Puck (Sept. 7, 1887)
They Walked for a Cake and Glory, Chicago Daily Tribune (Feb. 18, 1892)
The Cake Walk, New York Times (Feb. 18, 1892)
Took the Cake, Boston Globe (Aug. 23, 1892)
CRITICISM
SELECTED CONTEMPORARY REVIEWS AND EARLY ASSESSMENTS
The Race Question in Fiction, The Sunday Herald [Boston] (Oct. 27, 1901)
Hamilton Wright Mabie o The New Books, The Outlook (Nov. 16, 1901)
Our Holiday Book Table, Zion's Herald (Dec. 4, 1901)
Mr. Chesnutt's Marrow of Tradition, New York Times (Dec. 7, 1901)
A New Uncle Tom's Cabin, St. Paul Dispatch (Dec. 14, 1901)
Katherine Glover o News in the World of Books, Atlanta Journal (Dec. 14, 1901)
Charles Alexander o Our Journalist and Literary Folks, The Freeman [Indianapolis] (Dec. 28, 1901)
Mr. Chesnutt and the Negro Problem, Newark Sunday News. (Dec. 29, 1901)
A. E. H. o Fiction, The Chautauquan (Dec. 1901)
William Dean Howells o From A Psychological Counter-Current in Recent Fiction, North American Review (Dec. 1901)
T. Thomas Fortune o Note and Comment, The New York Age (July 20, 1905)
Sterling A. Brown, Arthur P. Davis, and Ulysses Lee o [Racial Conflict in Fiction]
RECEPTION
Sylvia Lyons Render o From Charles W. Chesnutt
William L. Andrews o From The Literary Career of Charles W. Chesnutt
CHARACTERS
John Edgar Wideman o Charles W. Chesnutt: The Marrow of Tradition
P. Jay Delmar o Character and Structure in The Marrow of Tradition
Ernestine Williams Pickens o White Supremacy and Southern Reform Samina Najmi o From Janet, Polly, and Olivia: Constructs of Blackness and White Femininity in The Marrow of Tradition
JUNGIAN AND FOUCAULDIAN APPROACHES
Marjorie George and Richard S. Pressman o From Confronting the Shadow: Psycho-Political Repression in The Marrow of Tradition
Ryan Jay Friedman o From "Between Absorption and Extinction": Charles Chesnutt and Biopolitical Racism
PLESSY V. FERGUSON AND THE MARROW OF TRADITION
U.S. Supreme Court o Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537 (1896)
Brook Thomas o The Legal Argument of Charles W. Chesnutt's Novels
THE MARROW OF TRADITION AND HISTORY
Joyce Pettis o The Literary Imagination and the Historic Event: Chesnutt's Use of History in The Marrow of Tradition
Jae H. Roe o From Keeping an "Old Wound" Alive: The Marrow of Tradition and the Legacy of Wilmington
Eric Sundquist o From Charles Chesnutt's Cakewalk
REALISM, TRAGIC MULATTO, VIOLENCE
Ryan Simmons o From Simple and Complex Discourse in The Marrow of Tradition
Stephen P. Knadler o From Untragic Mulatto: Charles Chesnutt and the Discourse of Whiteness
Bryan Wagner o Charles Chesnutt and the Epistemology of Racial Violence
Charles W. Chesnutt: A Chronology
Selected Bibliography
