Charles W. Chesnutt Publishes in The Atlantic Monthly

Charles W. Chesnutt became the first Black American writer to have fiction published in The Atlantic Monthly with 'The Goophered Grapevine' in August 1887, though the editors did not initially reveal his race to readers. His carefully crafted dialect stories used the frame of an elderly formerly enslaved man to critique slavery and white paternalism. Chesnutt's breakthrough opened mainstream literary publishing to Black voices for the first time.