“The Sheriff’s Children” is a short story written by Charles W. Chesnutt in 1889 against the backdrop of the post-bellum South. “The Sheriff’s Children” was originally published in the New York Independent and then later in Chesnutt’s collection The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line. Writing in the Literary Realist style, he eschewed the Romanticism of the previous age, using close description of his characters’ internal and external conflicts to illuminate the real plight of African American people. Set in the 1970s, toward the end of the Reconstruction Period, the short story exposes and confronts the racist social systems that continued to imprison the Black population after the American Civil War. In “The Sheriff’s Children,” Chesnutt explores themes of Structural Racism and Personal Responsibility, Social Versus Moral Duty, and Free Will Versus Fatalism as well as the related ideas on the nature of justice, change versus tradition, rural versus city life, and knowledge versus ignorance.

Chesnutt (1859-1932) was born to freed people of color. His paternal grandfather had been a white enslaver. While Chesnutt noted that he was of seven-eighths white European descent and could “pass” for a white man, he refused to do so, identifying as African American. Chesnutt grew up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in financial hardship that required him to help support his family. He attended school, however, becoming a teenage teacher-pupil out of financial need and published his first pieces at this time. Chesnutt became a resolute advocate for African American civil rights, using his position as a teacher at Black schools to promote social change. During his lifetime, his literary work was often criticized by white readers who were shocked by his subjects, including the taboo topic of mixed-race children. In 1928, Chesnutt was awarded the NAACP’s Spingarn Award, and is now acknowledged as one of the most significant African American writers. In 2017 “The Sheriff’s Children” was adapted into a short film by Michael Boedicker.

This guide is based on the version in Chesnutt: Stories, Novels, and Essays, The Library of America, 2002. Citations refer to page numbers in this edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain detailed descriptions and discussion of racism, racial stereotyping, racially motivated violence. The sources material also contains extremely offensive racist language that this guide quotes as necessary to enable analysis.

The narrator of the source text uses the word “negro” to describe Black people. Although this is now recognized as offensive, it was considered an acceptable classification at the time and was used by African Americans to self-identify.

The story is written from the perspective of a first-person omniscient narrator. Chesnutt introduces the reader to Branson County, a fictional district in North Carolina, one of the “most conservative States of the Union” (131). He imagines this county against the recent historical backdrop of the post–Civil War South, even though the county he creates has remained largely unchanged by the war. Branson County is “sequestered” from the wider world and its progress. The county seat, the “city” of Troy, has a population of only 500. Chesnutt writes that it would seem a “deserted village” to anyone from a real city. Colonel Sheriff Campbell is Branson County’s sheriff, a man of property and education. His family owned plantations and enslaved people prior to the Civil War.

The county is disrupted by the shock occurrence of a murder. This murder, of Captain Walker, a beloved figure and war hero, enlivens the town, drawing people from all ends of the county. The people accuse a person of color who was seen leaving the Captain’s house, a local man named Tom. Tom is found to have stolen the Captain’s coat. A group of vigilante citizens capture him, and the Sheriff jails him pending his hearing. The townspeople consider Tom’s guilt as a foregone conclusion. Saying that they think hanging is too lenient, they form a mob intent on removing Tom and lynching him.

A Black man named Sam alerts the sheriff to the mob and the sheriff immediately answers his call to duty. After reassuring his daughter, Polly, and providing her with a horse-pistol, he walks over to the jail. There he confronts the large mob who riots and threatens to enter and steal the prisoner. The sheriff encourages Tom to run for his life if the mob breaks in. Sheriff Campbell promises not to identify or indict any of the mob members but threatens to shoot anyone who enters. The mob eventually retreats while the sheriff stands guard.

Tom uses this time to take up his pistol. He orders the sheriff to unlock the cell and jail. Tom says he did not kill the Captain but he will have to kill the sheriff in order to escape. The sheriff pleads with him not to kill the man who saved his life and asks why Tom would do this. Tom reveals himself as the illegitimate son of the sheriff, sold to another enslaver along with Tom’s enslaved mother, Cecily. When the sheriff again pleads with Tom not to kill his own father, Tom admonishes him for using that term, because the sheriff has never shown him any fatherly love, care, or protection. When the sheriff pronounces Tom “free now,” Tom scoffs at this, saying he will never be free.

While the men argue, Polly arrives and shoots Tom. The sheriff staunches the wound and, even though he now believes Tom to be innocent, locks him back in jail. Once chained Tom goes limp, losing the spirit he exhibited before.

When the sheriff arrives home, he feels himself in an existential crisis. He reflects upon his duty as sheriff versus his duty as father, finally acknowledging his moral duty as a man, as a child of God, to be the highest of all. He vows to “move Heaven and earth” to free his son (147). Unfortunately, he is too late: When he returns to the jail the next morning, Tom has removed the wrap from his arm and bled to death during the night.