Charles Waddell Chesnutt was born in 1858 in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of free African Americans who had left the South a few years previously. Chesnutt spent his early childhood in the North, but after the Civil War, his family moved back to Fayetteville, North Carolina, where his father ran a grocery store.

As a boy, Chesnutt enjoyed reading at a private library and browsing in bookstores. Chesnutt dreamed of becoming a professional writer, and his first story was published in a local paper when he was only fourteen. The following year, he was forced to drop out of school and go to work as a teacher in order to supplement his family's income. Four years later, he began to teach at the Colored Normal School in Fayetteville, and he became principal of that institution in 1880. Despite his successful career, he still worked toward his long-cherished dream...