The Marrow of Tradition

Masterfully narrated by Michael Collins, the historical novel, The Marrow Of Tradition, by Charles Waddell Chesnutt is set in the 1898 North Carolina city of Wellington, presenting a kind of microcosm of the ante-bellum south where a town has gone mad with racial hatreds, and roiling confrontations between southern "redeemers" and the now free black community. The first African-American novelist to achieve national recognition for his work, Charles Waddell Chesnutt is able to take us back into a time of family tragedy, death, lynch law, and endemic racial violence that would scar the worlds of both whites and blacks for generations to come. The Marrow Of Tradition is a compelling, engaging story of characters and events that grips the listener's total attention from beginning to end. (Running Time: 3:30 hours)

This Chesnutt novel is one of the most powerful fictional works about the nature of race relations published in the era of the Jim Crow South. It carefully relates issues of the "separate but equal" doctrine, Southern tradition and class distinctions, mob justice and lynching, generational shifts in race relations, and a number of other problems in an interesting narrative account of the Wilmington race riot. Chesnutt's style, powerful nuances, and memorable characters make this novel an essential read for anyone interested in the history of race relations in America.

This novel, originally published in 1901, is based on a historic event from 1898, a racially based incident in which about a dozen African Americans in Wilmington, North Carolina, were brutally murdered by Caucasians who'd lost political power, after Reconstruction, and successfully gained that power back by massacring some and completely intimidating all of the other African Americans in that community. Chesnutt, however, does not simply retell the story of the "race riot" but uses that event as the basis for a story about the tensions between peoples of different "races" and the disenfranchisement of African Americans at the initiation of Jim Crow Laws. This is an interesting read, and excellent for the classroom, particularly when thinking about using fiction as the basis to teach students to do research. There are three editions: two are good and the third should be ignored completely. Buy the 20th Cent. Classics edition (edited by Sundquist) or the Univ. of Michigan/Ann Arbor Paperback edition (edited by Farnsworth). Do NOT buy the Black Classics/X-Press version; it is a sham. The publishers have changed the title to Tradition and have left out portions of the novel, sometimes just phrases and other times whole paragraphs. The Black Classics/X-Press edition is a different read completely and should NOT be ordered.

Do not let the original publication date fool you. This novel could easily have been written yesterday. The themes are timely, and the action is exciting. You will see for yourself how much and how little society has changed. This book is a real page-turner.