| Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858-1932), born in Cleveland, Ohio, was the son of free African Americans, Andrew Jackson Chesnutt and Ann Maria Sampson Chesnutt. The Chesnutts migrated to Cleveland from Fayetteville, North Carolina, in the 1850s but returned to Fayetteville after the Civil War. Although Charles Chesnutt spent his youth in Fayetteville, he returned to the city of his birth in 1883. Chesnutt, like his parents before him, left the South to find better opportunities for himself and his family, his wife, Susan Perry Chesnutt, and his children, Ethel, Helen, Dorothy, and Edward. In Cleveland, Chesnutt became a lawyer, a noted businessman, and an author. An activist, Chesnutt was involved in the initial Niagra Movement, and later was one of the founders of the NAACP. He received the coveted Springarn Award in 1928. Chesnutt’s literary works include two collections of short stories, The Conjure Woman (1899) and The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories (1899); three novels published during his lifetime, The House behind the Cedars (1900), The Marrow of Tradition (1901), and The Colonel’s Dream (1905); a biography, Frederick Douglass (1902); and three recently edited and published novels, The Quarry (1997). Paul Marchand, F. M. C. (1999), and Mandy Oxendine (1999). |
