My ethic was to do my utmost to make the public scenes accurate. But I also gave my historical figures dialogue—much of it from what they were recorded to have said, other dialogue from words they wrote in speeches, tracts, or letters.
In crafting dialogue, I relied a lot on what people wrote at the time. Certainly the written voice isn’t exactly the conversational one, but in letters and speeches and diaries, the writer can hear the grammar of the time, the rhythm of a particular voice, the cadence of thought, the favorite expressions, and the figurative language of that bygone day. And even contemporary sources can lend insight: Ivanhoe Grant’s sermonizing is based on an African-American radio evangelist I used to listen to during road trips.
So, for example, I have a scene in which Fr. Christopher Dennen—the young social activist priest—argues with Col. Alfred Moore Waddell about the immortality of the human soul after death. It was an argument they indeed carried on—in the pages of the local newspaper.
During that extended conversation, Fr. Dennen reminds Col. Waddell of a lynching that took place in 1831—the year of the Nat Turner rebellion—when six black strangers entered the city during the height of the hysteria over slave uprisings. The men were summarily shot and beheaded, their heads mounted on poles on the roads leading into the city as a warning to slaves contemplating rebellion.
Col. Waddell maintains, “A lesson was required.”
“The lesson is,” Father Dennen replies, “if you don’t tell the story in its truth, you relive it over and over again. Can’t you see that?”
His answer is the heart of the book, and his question to Waddell is my own question to readers: Can’t you see that?
It’s a question we need to ask over and over, in light of the resurgence of white supremacy, in all its hateful rhetoric and ugly violence—in Charleston, Charlottesville, and yes, North Carolina, where the Klan held a rally to celebrate the inauguration of our most recent president: Can’t you see that?
And though the exchange is invented, Waddell’s words are just a slight paraphrase of what he wrote shortly after the coup, for publication in a national magazine, and Fr. Dennen’s tracks with his long record of strong advocacy for social justice.
In writing the book, I made certain logical leaps of imagination—for example, casting George Rountree—later known simply as Judge Rountree—as a kind of legal counsel to the two secret groups who were planning the coup, unbeknownst to each other. They wanted their actions couched in the color of law. Obviously there was no written record of this—just as the secret groups left no minutes of their meetings. But after the book was published, George Rountree III confirmed in a public meeting before a fairly hostile crowd during the “Wilmington in Black and White” series—in a presentation that was both brave and candid—that indeed his grandfather had acted in such a role. It was just one of numerous honest and difficult conversations held around the city in an effort to come to terms with what had happened in 1898—and what has happened since.
And speaking of dialogue and language, I thought about the issue of language—specially the use of the word nigger—long and hard even before drafting the novel, and had several conversations about it with my wise and talented editor, Steve Kirk. I decided to use the language of the time for the sake of authenticity, and that vile word hits the reader right between the eyes in the prologue. I wanted the violence of the very language used against black people to come through loud and clear—and early on. To soften the language used by the white supremacists for the sake of propriety would be a kind of lie. The prologue declares that this novel will take on ugliness and violence without averting its gaze.
There can be a violence in language—by means of which white supremacists sought to dehumanize African-American citizens. What ended in mass murder in 1898 began with incendiary speeches, newspaper articles, handbills—and yes—sermons preached from the pulpits of the finest white churches in town. And I would argue that much of it began with the use of that word—nigger.
My purpose was never to offend or shock, except in the sense that I hope the reader feels a righteous outrage at those who use the word so casually in the novel, for whom it is an expression of contempt for their black neighbors and colleagues.
And I will just add that I use other language of the time—Alexander Manly billed his newspaper as an “Afro-American” daily, so who am I to change it? Likewise, “Negro” was a term of respectability, not an affront. It was a term black citizens called themselves—and I believe people should be called by the name they choose. That changes with generations and events, but this novel is set firmly in 1898. I once had a reader object that “Keep on keepin’ on” was a term from the 1960s, but in fact it was a slogan of the Salvation Army at the time.
History lives in the language in which it is expressed, and for history to be accurate the language has to be accurate.
I said earlier that my job is partly to excite an interest in the history behind the fiction. I am well aware that any popular book or movie that creates a very distorted picture of history can subvert the very thing the historical novelist is trying to accomplish.
And that, even as a writer immersing himself in primary sources relating the event for more than a year, as I did before writing a word of the novel, I can never be as comprehensively accurate as the historian who has devoted his or her career to investigating the event.
Thus my fondest wish is that the reader who finishes reading Cape Fear Rising will then seek out David Cecelski and Tim Tyson’s excellent compendium of essays on the white supremacist violence: Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898. Read what some of our best historians have to say about the event. Then check out the report of the 1898 Race Riot Commission established by the North Carolina General Assembly in 2000—the very first time these fatal events were ever investigated by any government entity.
And read as well Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow Tradition or Jack Thorne’s Hanover or the Persecution of the Lowly, both written from an African-American point of view shortly after the events occurred.
And maybe then that reader will also seek out Cecelski’s The Fire of Freedom: Abraham Galloway and the Slaves’ Civil War or The Waterman’s Song—and enlarge his or her knowledge of the complex slave culture that existed before the Civil War and how that culture—with all its heartbreak, violence, and economical benefits to slave owners and others—shaped the Civil War. And more importantly, how many blacks, both free and enslaved, fought to win freedom and true citizenship.
And how as many as eight thousand of the twenty-five thousand or so freed slaves who followed William T. Sherman’s invading army in 1865 and were sent to the Freedman’s Bureau in Wilmington settled in and around the city, establishing a black majority.
That’s the backstory to 1898.
And just as history has a backstory, it has a future. I end Cape Fear Rising by telling the reader what became of each of the characters in the book—both real and fictional. Partly this is to extend what John Gardner, the late novelist, called, “the vivid and continuous dream” of fiction. But it is also—importantly—to recognize that most of these dusty old characters who started all the trouble were young men at the time and lived well into the civil rights era—my own childhood. And maybe yours. As did many of their victims.
History is the best story there is because it is a real story, full of remarkable people and amazing events that shaped us, whether we know history or not.
History does indeed have a future, and that future is us. And the stories we tell will shape the story we write—with our lives. And that, too, will become history.
CONSEQUENCES
I always tell my students that the writer’s two most indispensable qualities are ignorance and curiosity—but only if you have both together. In other words, don’t write what you know—write what you really want to find out about.
I came to the story of the 1898 coup completely free of any preconceptions or knowledge of the even
ts. No family stories either to shroud the events in a gauze of sentimental reminiscence or cast them as the behavior of hateful villains. I consulted only primary sources, with the exception of the two novels mentioned—which in a sense are primary in that they constituted the first published literary reaction to the coup. I wanted to hear the voices of people who had been there, at the time, in the thick of the action.
My ignorance helped in another way: as a relatively naïve, untenured assistant professor new to the city, I wrongly imagined that the events were historical—that is, that they were far in the past, removed from present passions and agendas. I grew up almost exactly on the Mason Dixon Line, and for me history had come alive in visits to Gettysburg, Valley Forge, Fort Delaware, and Brandywine battlefield—places full of monuments and artifacts, fascinating to be sure, but also museums of what used to be.
So, when this novel was first published in 1994, I was unprepared for the reactions of colleagues, the media, and the community. And had I anticipated the controversy it would cause, I might have been tempted to back away from writing it.
A friend and former student who was a sheriff’s deputy advised me to plan for possible repercussions—to buy a shotgun and put up motion-sensor lights around my house. This seemed to me like a big overreaction. I installed the lights but did not purchase a shotgun.
I had outlined the story for Dr. James Leutze, then chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNCW), during a canoe trip down the Cape Fear. He then asked me to brief the assembled administrators at UNCW—provost, deans, counsel, and some others. I was asked to meet with certain members of the Board of Trustees related to the families I was writing about—and on the advice of our provost, declined.
While the book was in press, I was summoned repeatedly by one member of the Board of Trustees and finally agreed to meet with him. We sat over breakfast at Denny’s while he upbraided me for harming the university’s reputation and its ability to fundraise, citing a recent gift of $10,000 from a local bank that had been rescinded on account of the book. (William Anylan, then vice-chancellor for advancement and responsible for all fundraising and a man of great integrity, later told me that if in fact that were the case, it wasn’t a gift we wanted—it was more important to maintain our integrity as a university—and assured me I shouldn’t worry about it; in any event, the book had yet to be published.)
After putting up with this unpleasant conversation for as long as I could stand, I asked the trustee outright: “What do you want?”
He said he wanted me to change the names.
He was referring to the fact that, like other historical novelists, I had used the real names of the historical figures involved—black (when they could be found) and white. My rationale was simple: if you were writing about the Battle of Gettysburg, say—as Michael Shaara did with astonishing vividness in The Killer Angels—you couldn’t turn “Pickett’s Charge” into “Smith’s Charge.”
These are public events. In the case of the 1898 coup, the white supremacists who planned and committed the violence made no secret about their roles. Not only did they have what we would call a media campaign all ginned up and ready to go as soon as the smoke cleared—so that their narrative of events made it into print before any more impartial account could—but members of the Light Infantry also met at Lumina, on Wrightsville Beach, in 1905 with a stenographer to memorialize their actions precisely so—as their transcript makes plain—they would be remembered by history.
After a blessing by Rt. Rev. Bishop Strange, Col. Walker Taylor speaks of the account he himself compiled: “I will state that I have endeavored to compile such information as I could get my hands on that would be a nucleus and that would enable some one to write a report of what was done as it was history and should not be erased from our minds [italics mine].”
After he gives a précis of his account, Capt. Thomas James speaks: “I move that the elaborate report of Col. Taylor be published in pamphlet form, and that it should be preserved as a matter of history. It is history and as such, should not be lost [again, italics mine].”
It was only later generations of whites who began to judge their actions to be morally and legally wrong—and, indeed, who would strive to erase the events from civic memory.
I told the trustee I would not change the names. In addition to the aesthetic reason, there was also the principle that at a university, it is simply not ethical for a trustee to make demands upon the creative work or research of a professor.
The Wilmington police chief invited me to dinner and told me how he had attended a meeting with university officials and the county sheriff to plan for possible ramifications of the book’s publication.
When the novel appeared, I waited for the Sunday review in the local Star-News, and was not much surprised to find it less than flattering and at times rather snarky: “In telling the story of 1898,” writes John Meyer, then managing editor, “Mr. Gerard’s burden is to speak the truth as he sees it without the inconvenience of sticking to the facts.” In the twenty-five years since publication, as the book has remained continuously in print, no historian has ever challenged its factual outline.
At about eight that Sunday morning, I received the first phone call. Rachel Freeman, an African-American member of the school board, told me that I was going to get a lot of hateful calls today and she just wanted me to start the day with a call from someone who was thankful for the book, and wished me well. Soon after, I got a call from Dr. Fred McRee, a prominent black historian. I have to paraphrase after all these years, but I remember vividly that he said he wanted to make me “an honorary brother,” in case I needed some place to hide from the white backlash. He was only half kidding.
The other calls started coming soon enough—anonymous, nasty messages on the answering machine (in those days before smart phones, you couldn’t trace the numbers), and one from some man purporting to be a MacRae, who accused me of “blaspheming” his family. I have no idea who he actually was.
A docent informed me that a trustee of the Cape Fear Museum had ordered her to take the novel off the shelf at the gift shop. An invitation to speak at the Kiwanis Club was quietly revoked—my university colleague who had arranged the invitation told me a descendant of one of the participants in the coup had threatened to withdraw funding for the Boys and Girls Club it supported if I appeared. Having once worked for Boys Clubs of America—an excellent organization—I just couldn’t do that to them, so I agreed. Other scheduled speaking invitations were rescinded.
But among all the vitriol—which continues to this day in some quarters—something really wonderful happened. It started with the book launch, in a reception suite at the university.
There was the publisher, my editor, and a stack of books. At first a few friends, then more, then a flood of people I didn’t know—many of them African-American. The Hon. Thomas Wright and State Sen. Luther Jordan arrived—both black legislators would be the drivers of the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission, established in 2000, that would finally investigate the coup. It was the most integrated event I had yet attended in Wilmington.
Not long after that, I gave the first public reading in Wilmington at the Old Market—a long brick building that descends from Front Street to Water Street. The renovation wasn’t finished, so it was just a brick shell with open market stalls. We gathered by candlelight in one of the spaces that would become a store, candles ranged along the sills where one day windows would enclose the shop, with listeners crowding both the room and the gallery beyond the windowsills. Again, the crowd was both black and white, and reading by candlelight in that space so close to the scenes of the violence of the novel inspired a kind of reverence for all those people who had turned out to hear the story.
After each reading, the questions came—polite and sincere, often couched in an anecdote of personal experience. I made my readings shorter and shorter—it was clear that the people in the room mainly wanted to talk to each other, to broach matt
ers that had lain between them for generations and were rarely mentioned in mixed-race company. And these sessions buoyed me with hope and pride.
But just last year, I learned a disquieting fact. When I came up for tenure shortly after the novel was published—and after my breakfast meeting with the trustee—an almost unprecedented thing occurred: the Board of Trustees decided to deny my tenure and promotion. This is an up-or-out decision—being denied tenure results in termination following the next academic year. This was the end of a long process, in which departmental colleagues, a committee of the college, the dean, the provost, and the chancellor had all evaluated my teaching and professional activity and approved my tenure. Approval by the board of trustees is traditionally a formality.
Chancellor Leutze told me that he argued his best for me, but it wasn’t enough. He said that Owen Kenan (a relative of William Rand Kenan), then a trustee, spoke up, insisting that I be granted tenure, saying that to punish me for writing the novel would be to go against the core value of academic freedom to which the university was committed. I never knew this stunning fact until long after he passed away—so I never had the chance to express how grateful to him I am. I was granted my tenure. But all these years later, I am forced to revisit every stage of my career at the university.
The coup of 1898 continues to cast a long shadow over the city I have called home for thirty years. It is—at long last—grudgingly acknowledged by the white community as a fact of our history. Yet the monument to the victims is tucked away on the northern outskirts of town, while the statue of the attorney general of the Confederacy (unveiled in 1911) and the monument to the Confederate soldiers (erected in 1924) continue to occupy pride of place in the heart of downtown. There is a highway marker honoring Alexander Manly. Another marker was approved in 2017 to memorialize the coup itself.
Yet the events so far remain absent from public school textbooks—a fact I discover anew each time I visit a classroom.
Cape Fear Rising Page 44