The Sheriff's Children

by Charles W. Chesnutt

The Sheriff's Children is a novel written by Charles W. Chesnutt. The story is set in the late 19th century in a small town in North Carolina. The main character of the novel is a young African American girl named Rena Walden. Rena is the daughter of the sheriff of the town, who is also an African American. Rena's mother died when she was very young, and she has been raised by her father and her aunt.The novel explores the themes of race, identity, and family. Rena struggles to find her place in the world as a young African American girl in a town that is deeply divided by race. She is torn between her loyalty to her father, who is a respected member of the community, and her desire to be accepted by the white people in the town.As Rena grows older, she begins to understand the complexities of race relations in her town. She becomes involved in the civil rights movement and works to bring about change in her community. Along the way, she falls in love with a young African American man named Frank, who shares her passion for social justice.The Sheriff's Children is a powerful and thought-provoking novel that explores the struggles of African Americans in the late 19th century. It is a story of love, family, and the fight for equality in a world that is often hostile and unjust.The woman went into the dining-room, and a moment later the sheriff came to the door. He was a tall, muscular man, of a ruddier complexion than is usual among Southerners. A pair of keen, deep-set gray eyes looked out from under bushy eyebrows, and about his mouth was a masterful expression, which a full beard, once sandy in color, but now profusely sprinkled with gray, could not entirely conceal. The day was hot; the sheriff had discarded his coat and vest, and had his white shirt open at the throat.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

Genres: Short Stories, School, Gothic, Fiction, Read For School, Classics, Literature

48 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Charles Waddell Chesnutt was an author, essayist and political activist, best known for his novels and short stories exploring complex issues of racial and social identity.

Reviews

[Tojuan Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

a morality tale, but a great one. the sheriff is like so many white men, he believes himself far better than he is. the son never had a chance and that makes me really sad.

[Cliff Sowers · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a dual major in English and History, I have researched the Civil War and its residual and lasting effects on postbellum America. I am a nationalist and I am proud of the United States, but if I had to point to a failure, it would be that the daily realities of life remain challenging for many of our black citizens. I also live in Richmond, Virginia – the former capital of the Confederacy and ground-zero for a great deal of the social justice strife which has consumed our nation the past few years. It is a tragedy of decency, decorum, and democracy that nearly 160 years after the Civil War’s conclusion, there remains in our society a lingering idea of free states and slave states. A modern American citizen would probably not use these terms to describe our current political climate, but the meanings of the terms is tangible and evident – one needs only to open a newspaper or watch a few minutes of cable news to witness the lingering tensions of the Civil War. The past few years have been tumultuous in my city of Richmond, Virginia. Many statues of Confederate heroes have been torn down, and just this week Fort Lee was renamed.

Much like the Confederate statues and government buildings named for Confederate heroes, Sheriff Campbell, a character in Charles Waddell Chesnutt’s The Sheriff’s Children, represents a lingering suppression that the Civil War should have alleviated. It is tempting to think of the sheriff as an honorable and good man; however, it is not only the black prisoner who wears a mask – the sheriff wears a mask, also. The sheriff is not a good man, and he hides behind the mask of military service and duty to the jail. “The struggle between his love of life and his sense of duty was a terrific one. It may seem strange that a man who could sell his own child into slavery should hesitate at such a moment, when his life was trembling in the balance. But the baleful influence of human slavery poisoned the very fountains of life and created new standards of right. The sheriff was conscientious; his conscience had merely been warped by his environment” (Chesnutt). The sheriff self-validates his abhorrent actions by believing himself to be a victim of circumstance and environment rather than accepting that he is a willing party to injustice.

The prisoner also wears masks, the most glaring of which is the mask of irony that he is half white but is essentially still considered a slave even though the Civil War has concluded. He must also wear a mask to conceal his anger towards his father, because of the perception that a white man’s motives and decisions are more important than a black man’s. From Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem We Wear the Mask, we can experience what the prisoner was surely feeling:

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,--

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

And from Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem Sympathy, we can begin to understand why the prisoner would remove his bandage and end his own life:

I know why the caged bird beats his wing

Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;

For he must fly back to his perch and cling

When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;

And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars

And they pulse again with a keener sting--

I know why he beats his wing!

The Bible reminds us that although masks and suffering are painful, if we remain faithful and diligent then God will lead us to salvation. From Psalm 34:18: "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Holy Bible 334). Even 160 years beyond the Civil War, we are still suffering, and it is imperative that Americans communicate with one another openly, remove our masks, and work diligently to solve the internal conflicts of the sheriff and prisoner.

Works Cited

Chesnutt, Charles Waddell. The Sheriff's Children. Project Gutenburg. Original copyright 1899

by the author. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11057...

Dunbar, Paul Laurence. The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Dodd, Mead &

Company, 1913. Gale College Collection,

link.gale.com/apps/doc/ADIXEP18318786...

GCCO&pg=20654165&xid=3ccc9621. Accessed 27 Apr. 2023.

Holy Bible. New Living Translation. Tyndale House Publishers. 2015.

[Zookswag · Rating 5 out of 5]

O son what comes now that you have come and shown me to be my son? You are not beloved but are be-loyaled. As will be shown by my heart when too late. I knew you little when I sold you with your mom before the War. Is my legitimacy tainted by this ill? But for now, my badge keeps you safe in my jail from the lynchers’ lamps fast approaching. I may be outgunned but not out dutied. And they know this. As they also know you’ve killed one of us, even though that may not be true. Is death by hang to come tonight, aft’ I’ve fallen in their path? Or will that same death be stayed but a while on the tongue of a sentence to come? If you only knew what I will come to feel and if only I now felt the same. But this is our lot, and we live or die on its cast. O son, know this, that what may come, I will come to you. Sooner or later.

So here Chestnutt examines the relationship between a man and his biracial son and the society in which they live. A topic he knew well, as he husbanded a black wife with whom together raised their biracial children in a time when that was just not done. Well written. Thoughtful.

[Vintagebooklvr · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful story of a Black man accused of murder set in post-Civil War rural North Carolina. The Sheriff was determined to stop the lynching of the man but acknowledged that there is little chance of a fair trial and wasn't going to go any extra lengths to see that the man does get one until he finds there was a connection to the accused man.

This was well-written and packed a lot of issues into a short story. Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932) was 7/8th white and could "pass" as one but decided not to. He wrote about the rape of Black women during slavery and after, lynching, and other forms of prejudice and racial terrorism. I want to read more by him. Not only did he write on very unpopular subjects but he wrote very well.

[Freya Abbas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very dramatic and well-written story with unexpected twists and a tragic ending.

[z al. · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was so frustrating to read especially the ending part. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so defensive over a character as I did for tom

[Ed Jefferson · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Justin Virge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really sad. Depicts a very complex and delicate situation for Tom and the Sheriff in the postwar south. Lots of interesting ideas regarding justice, regret, identity, and fatherhood.

[Susan Molloy · Rating 5 out of 5]

🖋️ I enjoyed reading this for a college course I took.
📙Published in ?.
⭐️●▬●⭐️●⭐️●▬●⭐️

[Cesco · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really interesting and tragic story. Although it is short, I absolutely devoured it.

[Vince · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for class! Short, engaging, and thought provoking. Really enjoyed it.

[ally douglas? · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting read in tandem with 12 Years a Slave.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for American Lit

I really liked The Sheriff’s Children because it took an honest look at the damage that slavery inflicted upon its victims. The sheriff was seen as a good man, because in that time society allowed a man to wash his hands of any wrongs that he did as a slave owner, and he was morally upstanding in all other aspects of his life. I loved this passage…

“The baleful influence of human slavery poisoned the very fountains of life, and created new standards of right. The sheriff was conscientious; his conscience had merely been warped by his environment.”

Was it right to have slaves? To father a child of one of the slaves? To sell both mother and son? Of course not, but this was a society where the sheriff’s eyes had never been opened to his own errors, a society where he was allowed to divorce himself from his usual standard of morality in all matters where slavery was concerned. This was truly a society of people who had pulled the wool thickly over their own eyes so that they would never have to let the guilt of what they were doing get anywhere near the surface.

I love that once the sheriff is forced to look at what he has done, “he saw that he had owed some duty to this son of his—that neither law nor custom could destroy a responsibility inherent in the nature of mankind.”

In this moment the sheriff comes to see that right is not conditional, but universal and he finally begins to accept accountability, only to learn that it is too little too late. It was such a tragic ending, but absolutely the right one, because no amount of freedom or apology could undo the damage that was done to victims of slavery.