10 facts about Charles Chesnutt, Fayetteville's famous Black writer
Charles Chesnutt (1858-1932) has permanently written Fayetteville into literary history. He is considered the first Black novelist to gain nationwide acclaim. His best-known writings were post-Civil War and Reconstruction stories of the color line, some of them set in the fictional town of “Patesville” — a thinly disguised Fayetteville. Chesnutt was born in Cleveland to free Black parents from Fayetteville. When he was 9, the family moved back to Fayetteville after the Civil War. Later, as a married man in his twenties, he returned to Cleveland, finding better opportunities up north t...