A review by leighkaisen
The Marrow of Tradition by Charles W. Chesnutt, Charles W. Chesnutt

Charles W. Chesnutt’s Marrow of Tradition reimagines a fictional account based on the Wilmington Race Riots of 1898. Here, the town is Wellington, and its characters bring a dynamic and personal glimpse into this moment in history. The white Carteret family and the mixed-race Miller family are inexorably linked by a hidden marriage and unacknowledged half-sisterhood. Major Carteret runs the Morning Chronicle newspaper, and he and his right-hand men are set in supremacist mindsets and schemes to keep their intended social order in the post-Reconstruction south. In the rising action leading up to the riot, a servant is blamed for a murder he did not commit, and another man is set on a vengeance to kill the man who killed his father. Together these subplots draw out the hard truths of black accusation in “the age of crowds” that permeated through mass retaliation and lynching (which made this novel too controversial in its original time of publication). The novel as a whole looks at layered dynamics between complex characters and offers an authentic view of colliding motives and difficult realities in the context of race, equality, society, greed, conviction, and even compassion. The Marrow of Tradition is in turns heavy and intriguingly readable; although Chesnutt confronts hard contexts he also leaves room for redemptions. I found Chesnutt’s juxtaposition of the Carteret and Miller family especially interesting; from the sisters’ story to Carteret’s need for Miller, a black doctor, to care for his son. Unfamiliar with this novel prior to reading it for a class, I can see why The Marrow of Tradition is considered to be a milestone for Civil Rights and for the landscape of literature.