Every day brings a new story. And each day contributes to story telling -- in prose and in poetry, in art and in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books.
Today is the story of June 20th
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It is the 171st day of the year, leaving 194 days remaining in 2022.
Although born in the North as a freeman, he was reared in the South, and he told stories of Southern plantation life from the perspectives of the enslaved.
He was one of the first Black writers and novelists to be published in the United States. He was of mixed race, and his stories and novels often featured similar protagonists. He wrote about racial identities, Blacks passing as white, color prejudice amongst Black people, and the social character of race.
He once estimated his own racial heritage as 15/16ths white and 1/16th Black. He could pass as white, but he was a proud African-American who identified as Black. He was active in the NAACP, and he wrote articles supporting education for Black people and for ending legal discrimination and segregation.
He never denied his heritage in his writings, nor did he advertise it.
He was the first Black writer to have an article published in the Atlantic Monthly magazine. The Goophered Grapevine was a subtle, ironic version of the plantation lifestyle pushed by white Southern writers. The story later became part of Chesnutt's first collection, The Conjure Woman..
His stories featured enslaved people who spoke and told their own stories in African-American Vernacular English. It was a deliberate attempt to subvert to then-popular image of happy, submissive, loyal slaves. Chesnutt acknowledged such people exist, but said, "I can't write about those people, or rather I won't write about them."
His books were popular, if sometimes controversial, in his day. One of his novels, The Marrow of Tradition, published in 1901, partly dealt with the Wilmington Riots of 1898, when a white mob violently overthrew the elected, biracial government of the North Carolina city.
He has since been more generally recognized as one of the best American writers of the period.
Chesnutt died in 1932.
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