Literature Network » Charles W. Chesnutt

"A living death": gothic signification and the nadir in The Marrow of Tradition.(Charles W. Chesnutt)(Critical Essay)

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From: MELUS
Date: 20021222
Author:Ianovici, Gerald

In his letter to Walter Hines Page dated 22 March 1899, Charles W. Chesnutt expressed dismay at the steady erosion of blacks' civil rights in turn-of-the-century America. Referring specifically to North Carolina's adoption of the "grandfather" clause that had been used to disenfranchise black male residents of several southern states, a law the Supreme Court upheld in Williams v. Mississippi (1898), Chesnutt worried about the growing hostilities confronting black Americans. In language that displays mistrust of the jurisprudential wisdom of the nation's highest court, Chesnutt ...

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