By Michelle Hines, University Relations
Contact: (336) 334-5371
Posted 1-2-07
GREENSBORO, NC – Dr. SallyAnn Ferguson, an English professor at UNCG, has admired and studied novelist Charles W. Chesnutt for years.
Chesnutt was a black man who could easily have “passed” for white. But he chose instead to embrace his heritage, and to write frankly about racial tensions.
This month, the U.S. Postal Service will honor Chesnutt with a stamp in its Black Heritage Series. And Ferguson is proud to mark the occasion by speaking at an all-day event Wednesday, Jan. 23, at Fayetteville State University’s Charles Chesnutt Library. Chesnutt, born in 1858, was the second principal of what is now FSU.
“If you’re going to look at 19th-century American literature, you’ve got to read Chesnutt,” said Ferguson. Houghton Mifflin recently published “Charles W. Chesnutt: Selected Writings,” an edition she edited, in their New Riverside Series on American Literature. She is also writing a full-length critical study of Chesnutt’s works.
Chesnutt grew up in Fayetteville but left the area for Cleveland, Ohio, in 1893. Widely considered the first major black novelist, he published several essays, novels and short story collections including “The Marrow of Tradition,” “The House Behind the Cedars” and “The Conjure Woman.” “Marrow” is a fictionalized account of the brutal 1898 Wilmington race riots.
“All Chesnutt did was deal with facts,” Ferguson said.
