This paper introduces a narrative approach to the analysis of late-nineteenth-century African-American piano music, a repertory that has received little sustained attention in music-theoretical scholarship. Although recent research has significantly advanced the study of Black vocal traditions, instrumental works, especially piano pieces written for popular and theatrical settings, remain largely absent from analytical discourse. This absence reflects both the precarious survival of many sources and long-standing assumptions about the limited analytical value of small-scale or functional repertories. By adapting narrative theory to harmonic analysis, this paper argues that these works invite close analytical engagement and articulate structured musical meaning. Musical examples focus on piano compositions by Jacob J. Sawyer (1856-1885). Drawing on narrative concepts developed in literary theory and adapted to music by scholars such as Carolyn Abbate and Byron Almén, the paper treats tonal motion and harmonic tension as expressive processes unfolding over time. In Sawyer's music, chromaticism, augmented-sixth and common-tone-diminished seventh chords, and rhythmic displacement function not as decorative surface features, but as integral components of musical design. Situated within post-Civil-War Black performance culture, specifically between minstrelsy and early Black musical theatre, these piano works employ familiar dance genres such as marches and waltzes while subtly reshaping tonal expectation and closure. Combining close harmonic analysis with narrative interpretation, the paper demonstrates how this repertory supports analytically rigorous readings and challenges the boundaries of the traditional musical canon.