Charles Waddell Chesnutt, a "voluntary Negro" (one who, though so fair as to be mistaken for white, chooses not to "pass"), was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the eldest child of Andrew Jackson Chesnutt and the former Ann Maria Sampson, free blacks, who in 1856 had fled their native North Carolina to escape the increasing circumscription of their rights as the national controversy over slavery intensified. After the Civil War, however, the family, which eventually included five living children, moved back to Fayetteville, North Carolina, where the father operated a downtown grocery.

The impressionable Charles Chesnutt grew up in this region, which became the setting for much of his short fiction. Until his father's business failed about 1872, he usually helped out in the store after school and paid close attention to the easy exchanges among the customers, black and white. When he had a little free time, he enjoyed browsing...