When Charles was about nine years old, curiosity propelled him toward the sound of gunfire; he discovered that a Negro man in custody and about to be arraigned for alleged rape had been shot and killed. The scene became an indelible memory, as did other less violent but nevertheless traumatic encounters with increasingly overt racial prejudice. Worsening conditions impelled him in 1883 to leave the South and the security of the Colored Normal School principalship in Fayetteville.
That position he had attained through precocity and perseverance. Forced to go to work at fourteen to help support the family, Charles spent a year as a pupil-teacher at the normal school, and then became in turn peddler, teacher, and administrator in Fayetteville, Charlotte, and adjacent rural communities. Independent study and private tutoring--when he could afford it--enabled him to acquire the requisite skills and certification to teach. He also learned much not only about the folkways and mores of the North Carolinians with whom he came in contact but also about periods and peoples of Western civilization that he encountered only between the covers of books.
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