The Marrow of Tradition

In 1898 there occurred the only ever successful coup d’etat in the United States, when the white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina overthrew the local government there and established their rule. Outraged at the portrayal of the massacre and riots that would follow, Charles Chesnutt published The Marrow of Tradition in 1901 as a direct response to the misrepresentation of information at the time. Its significance lies not only in its moral courage, but in the realistic depictions of a multitude of varying points of view — all of which represent a person or a group who bore witness or were swept up in this tragic historical chapter.