Reading Response: The Marrow of Tradition
by Elizabeth Williams
Major themes in Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition include African American communities in a post Civil War town, race relations between “free” African Americans and the white population, the lynching of African Americans, and the mixed race individuals from white and black backgrounds. The author, Charles W. Chesnutt, is personally aware of the stigma, controversy, limitations, and opportunities for people with mixed raced heritage. Chesnutt himself is of mixed black and white heritage, appearing white to the unknown eye.
In The Marrow of Tradition, Janet Miller is an example of a person of mixed race. Her father was a white aristocrat while her mother was a black servant. She represents the duality of the town divided by race. Janet recognizes herself as part of the black community, while her white half-sister, Olivia Carteret, has an internal battle of recognizing Janet not only as her sister, but also as an equal. The people of mixed races represent the hopeful possibility of unity between the two races. However, the white population denies the possibility because their views of mixed people as an impure race. The white race’s denial of potential of racial unity was also because their fear of the loss of their own power, positions, and property.
Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition is an account of the 1898 race riots in Wilmington, North Carolina. The tensions in the town of Wilmington, or Wellington as it is called in this novel, are founded in the power struggle between white aristocrats and African American men with political and economic power. Reconstruction gave African Americans freedom to integrate into the political world. The white men, who formally had a monopoly on economic and political power in the United States, were threatened by the success of African Americans in their towns and states. The whites of Wellington tried to take back their monopoly of power and oust the black community.
The tension is fueled further by an editorial that is placed in the African American newspaper questioning the lawfulness of lynching. The editorial included statements regarding lynching as a form of subjugation towards blacks from the white population rather than a judicial reprimand. Typically, the lynching that took place during the Reconstruction era was performed on the basis of fictional reasoning for the punishments inflicted.
Lynching often occurred when a black man was accused of raped a white woman. The accusations of rape were usually completely unfounded and an obstruction of real justice. Rights of African Americans and the rights of women were hindered by the fictitious accusations. The lynching process was not only performed by a mob, but also by two or three individuals looking for complete domination of the black population in the segregated town. They were done publically and/or privately, depending on the publicity of the “crime” in question.
In The Marrow of Tradition, the race riot and lynching of the African Americans in Wellington, North Carolina were set on a public stage. The African Americans of Wellington were gaining too much of a voice and backing of a select few white members of the town, which made the major white aristocrats devise a plan for annihilating the presence of blacks in the political realm of power. Carteret, Belmont, and McBane reprinted an anti-lynching editorial, written by a mixed race man, to fuel the fire of racial tension.
They not only succeed in enraging fellow white aristocrats, but also succeed in having white men murder any black person they come across on the streets of this torn town. The author aimed to remain true to the historical record concerning the race riots in Wilmington. In The Marrow of Tradition, Charles W. Chesnutt brings the stage of the Wilmington massacre to a worldwide platform in order to teach readers from any generation about the barbarism inflicted upon the African Americans during the Reconstruction era.
by Elizabeth Williams
Major themes in Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition include African American communities in a post Civil War town, race relations between “free” African Americans and the white population, the lynching of African Americans, and the mixed race individuals from white and black backgrounds. The author, Charles W. Chesnutt, is personally aware of the stigma, controversy, limitations, and opportunities for people with mixed raced heritage. Chesnutt himself is of mixed black and white heritage, appearing white to the unknown eye.
In The Marrow of Tradition, Janet Miller is an example of a person of mixed race. Her father was a white aristocrat while her mother was a black servant. She represents the duality of the town divided by race. Janet recognizes herself as part of the black community, while her white half-sister, Olivia Carteret, has an internal battle of recognizing Janet not only as her sister, but also as an equal. The people of mixed races represent the hopeful possibility of unity between the two races. However, the white population denies the possibility because their views of mixed people as an impure race. The white race’s denial of potential of racial unity was also because their fear of the loss of their own power, positions, and property.
Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition is an account of the 1898 race riots in Wilmington, North Carolina. The tensions in the town of Wilmington, or Wellington as it is called in this novel, are founded in the power struggle between white aristocrats and African American men with political and economic power. Reconstruction gave African Americans freedom to integrate into the political world. The white men, who formally had a monopoly on economic and political power in the United States, were threatened by the success of African Americans in their towns and states. The whites of Wellington tried to take back their monopoly of power and oust the black community.
The tension is fueled further by an editorial that is placed in the African American newspaper questioning the lawfulness of lynching. The editorial included statements regarding lynching as a form of subjugation towards blacks from the white population rather than a judicial reprimand. Typically, the lynching that took place during the Reconstruction era was performed on the basis of fictional reasoning for the punishments inflicted.
Lynching often occurred when a black man was accused of raped a white woman. The accusations of rape were usually completely unfounded and an obstruction of real justice. Rights of African Americans and the rights of women were hindered by the fictitious accusations. The lynching process was not only performed by a mob, but also by two or three individuals looking for complete domination of the black population in the segregated town. They were done publically and/or privately, depending on the publicity of the “crime” in question.
In The Marrow of Tradition, the race riot and lynching of the African Americans in Wellington, North Carolina were set on a public stage. The African Americans of Wellington were gaining too much of a voice and backing of a select few white members of the town, which made the major white aristocrats devise a plan for annihilating the presence of blacks in the political realm of power. Carteret, Belmont, and McBane reprinted an anti-lynching editorial, written by a mixed race man, to fuel the fire of racial tension.
They not only succeed in enraging fellow white aristocrats, but also succeed in having white men murder any black person they come across on the streets of this torn town. The author aimed to remain true to the historical record concerning the race riots in Wilmington. In The Marrow of Tradition, Charles W. Chesnutt brings the stage of the Wilmington massacre to a worldwide platform in order to teach readers from any generation about the barbarism inflicted upon the African Americans during the Reconstruction era.