The Marrow of Tradition (1901) is a historical novel by the African American author Charles Chesnutt, set at the time and portraying a fictional account of the Wilmington Race Riot in North Carolina in 1898. Set in the fictional town of Wellington, The Marrow of Tradition features several interweaving plots that encompass the poles of the racially segregated society of the American South at the turn of the century.

The House Behind the Cedars, which many consider Charles Chesnutt's finest novel, tells of John and Lena Walden, mulatto siblings who pass for white in the postbellum American South. The drama that unfolds as they travel between black and white worlds constitutes a riveting portrait of the shifting and intractable nature of race in American life. This edition revitalizes a much-neglected masterpiece by one of our most important African-American writers. As Werner Sollors writes, "William Dean Howells did not overstate his case when he compared Chesnutt's works with those by Turgenev, Maupassant, and James . . . and [Chesnutt] has become one of the most important 'crossover' authors from the African-American tradition."

First published in 1905, this novel portrays the continuing oppression and racial violence prominent in the South even after the Civil War. The economy of the South was doing very poorly and further limited the opportunities for Black people to work their way up the socioeconomic ladder. By presenting life in Clarendon, Chesnutt illustrates how unfairly Black people were treated in the South during this time. The novel follows Colonel Henry French through the difficulty he faces in trying to reform the southern town, as he meets unfair resistance and violence from the racist people of the town. Although the novel ended up a failure, Chesnutt accurately depicts the hopelessness of reforming the South through the story of Colonel Henry French and the Southern town of Clarendon, North Carolina.