Aside from being a noted attorney, Charles Waddell Chesnutt was America's first important black writer of fiction. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to Andrew J. and Maria Sampson Chesnutt, free people of color from North Carolina. His father joined the Union army during the Civil War, serving as a teamster. After the war he returned to North Carolina and settled with his wife and children. Within a few years Andrew Chesnutt was elected a county commissioner and a justice of the peace.

Education and Experience in North Carolina.

Charles Chesnutt enjoyed school, and by the time he was a teenager he was a pupil-teacher. In his travels through North Carolina looking for summer teaching positions, Chesnutt learned firsthand what it meant to be an African American. He was so light-skinned that he could pass for white. He recalled one white man calling to...