by Paul Laurence Dunbar · 1898
Historical Fiction · Classics
Paul Laurence Dunbar's first collection of short stories, drawn from Black life in the South and the North after the Civil War.
Content note: Written around the turn of the twentieth century, this book uses the language of its time, including racial terms that are outdated and offensive today, and describes racism.
ANNER ’LIZER’S STUMBLIN’ BLOCK
It was winter. The gray old mansion of Mr. Robert Selfridge, of Fayette County, Ky., was wrapped in its usual mantle of winter sombreness, and the ample plantation stretching in every direction thereabout was one level plain of unflecked whiteness. At a distance from the house the cabins of the negroes stretched away in a long, broken black line that stood out in bold relief against the extreme whiteness of their surroundings.
About the centre of the line, as dark and uninviting as the rest, with its wide chimney of scrap limestone turning clouds of dense smoke into the air, stood a cabin.
There was nothing in its appearance to distinguish it from the other huts clustered about. The logs that formed its sides were just as seamy, the timbers of the roof had just the same abashed, brow-beaten look; and the keenest eye could not have detected the slightest shade of difference between its front and the bare, unwhitewashed fronts of its scores of fellows. Indeed, it would not have been mentioned at all, but for the fact that within its confines lived and thrived the heroine of this story.
Of all the girls of the Selfridge estate, black, brown, or yellow, Anner ’Lizer was, without dispute, conceded to be the belle.
