Po' Sandy

Sandy’s story and the frame narrative that surrounds it is set in Patesville, North Carolina, widely understood to be a fictional representation of Fayetteville, where Chesnutt lived for much of his life. Chesnutt makes John the first narrative voice in the story, but Julius gets the last word. The story shows how an intelligent, newly freed Black American can get what he wants even in the face of racial injustices. 

“Po’ Sandy” was well received at the time of publication, and many literary critics have read it in the tradition of slave trickster tales that tell of the manipulation of one character by another. Critics in the late 20th and the early 21st centuries, however, often read the story as a sophisticated piece of political writing. Paul R. Petrie writes that Chesnutt “set himself the task of using fiction to transform the hearts and minds of a politically powerful, elite white readership, upon whose conceptions of African Americans every possibility of civil and social reform depended” (Petrie, Paul R. “Charles W. Chesnutt, The Conjure Woman, and the Racial Limits of Literary Mediation.” Studies in American Fiction, Johns Hopkins University Press, vol. 27, no. 2, Autumn 1999, pp.183-204).

The story portrays slavery realistically rather than romantically. In Chesnutt’s time, many white Southern writers treated the antebellum period with nostalgia as they created the mythology of the “Lost Cause,” which said slavery was a benevolent institution. Chesnutt’s story rebuts the “Lost Cause” narrative. The treatment Sandy experiences, while not life-threatening, is inhumane. The story’s contemporary audience would have been aware that enslaved people might sometimes ride in a cart or carriage provided by a master or mistress, but more often they walked to complete their duties and stay in touch with their families. Sandy reckons that he “would n’ a’ mine comin’ ten or fifteen mile a night ter see Tenie” (45). In addition to the work he did in the daytime, Sandy would be willing to travel additional miles on foot in the evening to stay in contact with Tenie.

The contemporary audience would know that some slaveholders provided only the minimal amount of food needed to keep a person able to work. They would have been aware that slaves were denied the legal right of having a family. Enslaved children were frequently sold away from their mothers and, as in the story of Sandy, those who considered themselves husband and wife were routinely sold away from one another (42). They also knew that while the 14th Amendment made former slaves full citizens of the US, Jim Crow laws continued the control that white Americans held over family and marital relationships.

Chesnutt’s story presents John’s voice first. It is the voice of a Northerner who neither supports nor opposes slavery or emancipation. He is looking for a good investment. Annie, his wife, clearly condemns slavery and is the voice of empathy. This was a common stereotype of women throughout the 19th century—that they were more compassionate than men. The stereotype sometimes allowed them to be dismissed as acting out of emotion rather than reason, but John does not dismiss Annie. He does ask if she has been influenced “by that absurdly impossible yarn” that Julius told. Annie replies, “I know the story is absurd” (61). She also believes the kitchen will “last longer if the lumber were all new” (61). John accepts Annie’s answer though he is unhappy about the additional expense.

But the main narrative voice is Julius, who has the knowledge of the past needed to tell the story. He is portrayed using the heavily affected Southern dialect that was a convention often used to differentiate a Black character from a white character or a Southerner from a Northerner. John speaks in precise and sophisticated sentences. However, an analysis of what is said, rather than how it is said, demonstrates that Julius controls the conversation. The story not only reveals some of slavery’s cruelties, but it also accomplishes Julius’s goal of preserving the schoolhouse for his church group’s use.