Charles W. Chesnutt and The Progressive Movement is both a literary and a historical analysis of two works of America's first significant black novelist. The book traces Chesnutt's participation in activities identified with Progressivism and highlights aspects of the movement in the South in his novels The Arrow of Tradition and The Colonel's Dream.
The book demonstrates the influence of a black artist as activist during the Progressive movement.

"In Charles W. Chesnutt and the Progressive Movement Ernestine Williams Pickens gives us a careful account of the social and political milieu in which Chesnutt created his major works and in the process puts us in possession of valuable insights concerning many of his better known contemporaries. At once a contribution to Chesnutt biography and criticism and to African American literary history, this book should immediately take its place as a valued resource for teachers and scholars in the fields it touches."
—Richard A. Long, Emory University

Ernestine Williams Pickens is associate professor of English at Clark Atlanta University.