Charles W. Chesnutt
Subtitle: essays and speeches
By: edited by Joseph R. McElrath, Jr., Robert C. Leitz III, Jesse S. Crisler.
Contributors: McElrath, Joseph R.; Leitz, Robert C., 1944-; Crisler, Jesse S.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Stanford, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 596
Subjects: African Americans -- Civil rights.; African Americans -- Social conditions.; American literature -- African American authors -- History and criticism.; African Americans -- Intellectual life.; African Americans in literature.; United States -- Race relations.
Description: The 77 works included in this volume comprise all of Chesnutt's known works of nonfiction, 38 of which are reprinted here for the first time. They reveal an ardent and often outraged spokesman for the African American whose militancy increased to such a degree that, by 1903, he had more in common with W. E. B. Du Bois than Booker T. Washington.

He was, however, a lifelong integrationist and even an advocate of "race amalgamation," seeing interracial marriage as the ultimate means of solving "the Negro Problem," as it was termed at the end of the century. That he championed the African American during the Jim Crow era while opposing Black Nationalism and other "race pride" movements attests to the way Chesnutt defined himself as a controversial figure, in his time and ours.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.