STORIES OF THE COLOR LINE, AND SELECTED ESSAYS***


E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Andrea Ball, and the Project Gutenberg
Online Distributed Proofreading Team



The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line,
and Selected Essays

Charles W. Chesnutt

1899






INTRODUCTION


Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858-1932)--African-American educator,
lawyer, and activist--was the most prominent black prose author of
his day. In both his fiction and his essays, he addressed the thorny
issues of the "color line" and racism in an outspoken way. Despite
the critical acclaim resulting from several works of fiction and
non-fiction published between 1898 and 1905, he was unable to make a
living as an author. He kept writing, however, and several works
which were not published during his lifetime have been rediscovered
(and published) in recent years. He was awarded the Springarn Medal
for distinguished literary achievement by the NAACP in 1928. The
library at Fayetteville State University