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(Spoilers ahead for “The Wife of His Youth” by Charles Chesnutt) The wounds inflicted from slavery in the United States have forever integrated the thought of African Americans being subhuman counterparts to white people in American society.  The Reconstruction period was composed of efforts to heal these wounds—the goal was to incorporate newly freed African Americans in the south as equal to their former oppressors, giving them the same opportunities. However, the conception of black people being inherently inferior to white people was a foundation to multiple Reconstructionist approaches. Take Booker T. Washington, one of the most prominent African American Reconstructionist figures, as an example—he thought that black people had to earn their own merit and thus “prove” their own value to white society in order to become equals—he conforms with the belief that they’re at this subhuman level that must climb up the social ladder to ever be on the same level as white people. Many...