Contested History · Suppressed Accounts
The Marrow of Tradition
A novel about the Wilmington massacre of 1898 — the only successful coup d’état on American soil, in which a white mob overthrew the elected government of a majority-Black city, destroyed its newspaper and killed an uncounted number of residents. Chesnutt wrote it three years after the event, while the official account still called it a riot provoked by its victims. The book sold poorly and effectively ended his career as a novelist. It is now read as the closest thing to a contemporary record written from the other side.
- Period
- 1901
- Region
- United States
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Public domain — published 1901, before 1930, so the work is free of copyright in the United States. The scan is the Internet Archive's, released without additional restriction.
- Source
- https://archive.org/details/marrowoftraditio00ches_0
This record is catalogued here; the text is held at the original source.
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