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Charles W. Chesnutt was the first important Afro-American writer of fiction to enlist the white-controlled publishing industry in the service of his social message, touching a significant portion of the white American reading audience with his indictment of American racism. His writing, which appeared during the nadir of Afro-American sociopolitical fortunes, made him a literary advocate for the interests of Afro-Americans with whom he most identified, namely, middle-class mixed-race Americans like himself and working-class blacks of the small-town South, whom he had known from his youth in eastern North Carolina. For this role Chesnutt has been most often remembered and most widely praised. However, he is being increasingly recognized as a literary innovator whose mastery of his craft, especially in the short story, enabled him to place a distinctive personal signature on his public message. Just as Afro-Americans gained from Chesnutt's sensitive analysis and portrayal of their social, economic, and political situation, so American literature was advanced by Chesnutt's literary experiments with the folktale and the novel of miscegenation.
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