This Thanksgiving, Remember the Curse of Ham
This article originally appeared in Imani Perry’s newsletter, Unsettled Territory, free through November 30 and available with an Atlantic subscription after that. Sign up here.Charles Waddell Chesnutt would hardly qualify as a representative of late-19th-century Black experience. Born in 1858 in Ohio to parents who had been free people of color in Fayetteville, North Carolina, his skin was so light that he could easily “pass” for white. But he didn’t.