Storied Charlotte

Charlotte’s True Crime Writers

September 13, 2020 by Mark West

My introduction to the genre of true crime took place while I was still in high school. I decided to read Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood after I saw the 1967 film adaptation of Capote’s book. Since I had already seen the film. I had a pretty good sense of what to expect from the book, but it still disturbed me. It wasn’t just Capote’s account of the murders of the four members of the Clutter family that got to me; what troubled me the most was Capote’s ability to bring his readers inside the minds of the two killers. Capote helped me understand these men’s thinking process, and I found it unsettling to see the world through their eyes. Works of true crime can do that. As a genre, true crime is about more than the crimes depicted. Works of true crime can shed light into the dark corners of human nature and reveal sides of our society that we generally like to keep out of view.

Charlotte is home to several excellent true crime writers, including Karen Cox, Pam Kelley, and Cathy Pickens. These three writers have recently published works of true crime that provide readers with insights into the seamier side of life in the American South. Karen Cox, a history professor at UNC Charlotte, published Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South in 2017. UNC Press brought out a paperback version of this book last month. Pam Kelley, a former reporter for The Charlotte Observer, wrote Money Rock: A Family’s Story of Cocaine, Race, and Ambition in the New South, which the New Press published in 2018. Cathy Pickens, the author of the Southern Fried Mystery Series, wrote Charlotte True Crime Stories: Notorious Cases from Fraud to Serial Killing, which came out with the History Press in 2019. I contacted all three of these authors and asked them to provide me with information about their books and their interest in the genre of true crime.

Here is what Karen sent to me:

I wasn’t searching for a true crime story to tell, the true crime story found me. I was in the Mississippi state archives wrapping up research for a different book, when a story caught my eye. In 1932, an elderly white couple from Natchez, known for their eccentricities and who lived with their goats in a crumbling down antebellum mansion, were charged with murdering their neighbor in Depression-era Mississippi. It was southern gothic come to life. I mean, who could resist such a story? I couldn’t. That is where things began, but it is not where they ended.

Certainly, the notoriety that the case received in the national media at the time made this a fascinating story. Known locally as the “Goat Castle murder,” the focus had remained on the white protagonists for decades. But as I learned, at the heart of the story was a tale of racial injustice. It’s more likely that a journalist or nonfiction writer might have written about this story, but I saw in it an opportunity for me, a historian, to write creatively about various topics that are central to understanding southern history–race relations, Jim Crow segregation, the double-standard of southern justice, the decline of the southern aristocracy, the southern gothic, and mass incarceration. These are tough issues for readers to grasp, but woven into a story of true crime they become easier to digest and understand.

At some point, my interest in writing about this case became an obsession to set the story right, to give some historical justice to the poor black domestic–Emily Burns–who was convicted of the crime and sent to one of the South’s most notorious prisons, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, better known as Parchman. She was innocent, but white southern society demanded that someone, especially a black someone, pay the price for taking a white life–even if the eccentric white neighbors were complicit in the crime. I think that writing Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South freed me as a historian to write for broader audiences. Academia can beat the creativity out of a person, but through true crime, I found my way back.

Here is what Pam sent to me:

My book focuses on true crime – cocaine dealing – but when I decided to write Money Rock, I also wanted to explore Charlotte’s legacy of racism. In a way, this book was a do-over. I’d first written about Belton Lamont Platt, a flashy coke dealer nicknamed Money Rock, when I covered his trial for the Charlotte Observer in 1986. When I reconnected with him in 2011, he’d spent more than 20 years in federal prison and become an evangelical minister. That’s when I started asking deeper questions that I hadn’t considered the first time.

I find the genre of true crime a double-edged sword. Done badly, it can be exploitive, reinforcing stereotypes about criminals without exploring why they commit crimes. I’d put my original 1986 story about Money Rock in this category. I focused on the man’s jewelry and money and cars but didn’t dig deeper. On the other hand, the best true-crime reporting can spotlight and even correct injustice. One terrific example – not a book, but a podcast – is In the Dark’s series on Curtis Flowers, a man who was tried six times in Mississippi for the same murder. Its meticulous reporting uncovers a botched investigation and stunning prosecutorial misconduct. The podcast drew national attention to the case, and last week, Mississippi’s attorney general finally dropped it. Flowers is free after 23 years in prison.

When I first began researching my book, I was trying to understand what drove Belton in his Money Rock days. I wanted to hear what it was like to be a major cocaine dealer, why he bought so much jewelry. Eventually, I began to look at larger issues, such as the role structural racism – segregation, urban renewal, mass incarceration – played in his family over several generations. It’s been gratifying to hear readers say the book opened their eyes to Charlotte’s racial history. What I love about the true crime genre is that it can illuminate so many things besides crime.

Here is what Cathy sent to me:

When I decided to become a mystery writer, I journeyed through courtrooms, high-profile trials, morgues and autopsy suites, jails, all the places where we wrestle with often insurmountable questions of good and evil. I was first intrigued with the crime solvers and the crime scientists, rather than the crimes and criminals. Then I stumbled on the crime reporters, those who made reportage its own art form: William Roughead, Edmund Pearson, F. Tennyson Jesse, Rebecca West, Zora Neale Hurston, Edna Buchanan.

Along the way, I’ve learned only the edges are black and white. The stories behind the headlines are the most fascinating, but we seldom get to peek back there.

In trying to understand my fascination with true crime, I’ve pored over academic studies and random apologist essays. None offer satisfying answers. I started reading true crime because I needed to understand. How could I write good crime fiction if I didn’t understand why crimes were committed, how they were solved, what it felt like to be a victim? The real fascination? I love a good story. Nowhere have I found better storytellers than lawyers, police officers … and crooks.

Our fascination with crime stories isn’t new, we just have more ways of engaging with the stories than ever before, the latest being podcasts, cable TV networks, and do-it-yourself social media sleuths. The demographic for the true crime “consumer” skews female. Is the puzzle-solving attraction a simple hearkening to Nancy Drew or Miss Marple? As for readers of mystery fiction, readers of true crime are often attracted by the puzzle, by wanting to mentally (and safely) engage in unraveling the mystery of who-dunnit or why. The stories are complex—and subtle. And endlessly fascinating.

Crime is a mirror that reflects its society, the people, the place, the time when it occurs. To understand any city, it helps to know its extremes, and crime is certainly an extreme, one that alters the lives of those who commit crimes, those who suffer, those who solve, and those who try to understand. In its broad outline, Charlotte crime varies little from that in other cities. But like any city, Charlotte lends its own unique flavor to the ways people can go wrong. Though regularly reported, “annual statistics” or “average” stories seldom grab headlines—and imaginations—for long. So what makes a story become part of the warp and weft, woven into the essence of a city and the people who call it home? With over one million residents, the Charlotte area is full of stories. In Charlotte True Crime Stories: Notorious Cases from Fraud to Serial Killing are stories that started in dark places but that show the heart of a city still southern and, in good ways, a bit small-townish.

Like Truman’s Capote’s In Cold Blood, the true crime books written by Karen Cox, Pam Kelley, and Cathy Pickens can leave readers feeling a bit unsettled, but they can also help readers better understand why some of our fellow humans turn to lives of crime. Karen, Pam, and Cathy have all written books that belong on the shelves of the ever-expanding library that is Storied Charlotte.

Tags: Charlotte true crime writers southern gothic true crime genre

Allegra Westbrooks, Charlotte’s Pioneering African American Librarian

September 07, 2020 by Mark West

courtesy of the Robinson-Spangler
Carolina Room

I never met Allegra Westbrooks. She retired from the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library (then called the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County) in 1984, the same year that I arrived in Charlotte. She did, however, have an impact on my early years in Charlotte. Soon after my arrival, I met Pat Siegfried, the library’s Director of Youth Services. When she found out that I once made my living as a professional puppeteer, she obtained funding for me to do puppet shows at every branch of the public library. I remember being impressed with the library’s extensive network of branches. These branches had their own community outreach which they used to promote my puppet shows. I was especially impressed with how these outreach programs connected with Charlotte’s African American communities. I shared with Siegfried my positive experiences performing at the various branches, and she mentioned that the strengths of the branch system had a lot to do with the woman who had long served as the Supervisor of Branches. That woman was Allegra Westbrooks.

When Westbrooks moved to Charlotte in 1947 to manage the Brevard Street Library branch of the public library, the library system was still segregated. The Brevard Street Library was one of only two branches that served African Americans at the time. After the library system desegregated in 1956, Westbrooks moved to the Main Library where she ran the acquisitions operation before being promoted to Supervisor of Branches in 1957, making her the first African American to hold the position of supervisor in the Charlotte public library. Over the years, her title changed, but she continued to serve as a leader of the branch system throughout the rest of her career.

During her thirty-six years with the public library, Westbrooks played a major role in developing library outreach programs and expanding the library’s branch system. Early in her career, she collaborated with community groups and organizations to make books available to children who did not live near branches, and then she started a bookmobile program to bring books to residents throughout Mecklenburg County. Later in her career, she helped expand the number of library branches operating in the county, and she encouraged the branches to sponsor book-related events that would draw local residents to the branches.

Toward the end of her career with the library, Westbrooks worked closely with Judith Sutton, who became the Deputy Director of Libraries in 1977. As Sutton recently recalled, Westbrooks “did everything in her power to orient me to the system I joined, the community we served and to the nature, history and resources of the variety of branches of the library. Allegra was a calm, quiet-spoken but strong advocate for the best in public library services.”

Westbrooks talked about the highlights of her career during an oral history interview conducted in 2007. To listen to this interview, please click on the following link: https://repository.uncc.edu/islandora/object/uncc%3A2152

Westbrooks retired in 1984, but she remained involved in the Charlotte community until her death in 2017. In recognition of Westbrooks’ many contributions to the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Board of Trustees recently decided to rename the Beatties Ford Regional Library in her honor. In April 2020, this library branch officially became known as the Allegra Westbrooks Regional Library. It’s a testament to Westbrooks’ lasting legacy that her contributions to Charlotte Mecklenburg Library are still remembered and honored some thirty-six years after she officially retired. As a librarian, Allegra Westbrooks devoted her career to making books and stories available to the residents of Charlotte. In the process, however, she made a place for herself in the pages of Storied Charlotte.

Tags: bookmobile

Labor Novels Set in the Charlotte Region

August 31, 2020 by Mark West

Given that Labor Day is nearly upon us, I have decided to focus this Storied Charlotte blog post on labor novels that take place in the Charlotte region. Not that many decades ago, the Charlotte area was known not for its banks but rather for its textile mills. I am reminded of this fact on a daily basis, for the house where I live started off as housing for the textile workers employed by Atherton Cotton Mills in what is now known as South End. Working conditions in our region’s textile mills were often far from ideal, and some of the workers in these textile mills responded to these conditions by participating in labor unions. These unions organized a number of strikes, the most famous of which was Gastonia’s Loray Mill Strike of 1929.

Over the years, numerous authors have written novels about the impact of the labor movement on the lives of textile workers in our region. For the purposes of today’s Storied Charlotte blog post, I will focus on three of these novels: Olive Tilford Dargan’s Call Home the Heart (1932), Doug Marlette’s The Bridge (2001), and Wiley Cash’s The Last Ballad (2017).

Olive Tilford Dargan’s Call Home the Heart originally came out under her pen name of Fielding Burke. The novel is largely set in Gastonia, and it deals with the Loray Mill Strike. The central character in the novel is a working-class woman named Ishma Waycaster. She moves from the Great Smokey Mountains to Gastonia in order to find work in a textile mill. Partially inspired by the strike leader Ella May Wiggins, this character becomes involved in the efforts to improve working conditions at the Loray Mill. The strike figures prominently in the conclusion of the novel, but most of the story focuses on the central character’s personal conflicts and her growing sense of desperation. Sometimes compared to Harriette Arnow’s The Dollmaker, Dargan’s Call Home the Heart is now recognized as one of best novels to come out of the labor movement. A writer for the Saturday Review described the book as “perhaps the best novel yet written of the industrial conflict in contemporary America.” The Feminist Press republished Call Home the Heart in 1983.

Doug Marlette is best remembered as The Charlotte Observer’s Pulitzer-Prize winning editorial cartoonist and creator of the Kudzu comic strip, but he also wrote two novels before his untimely death in a car accident in 2007. His first novel, The Bridge, takes place in a small North Carolina town where the central character, a newspaper cartoonist named Pick Cantrell, grew up. Pick returns to this town after his career takes a nose dive, and he reconnects with his grandmother, who is known as Mama Lucy. As the story progresses, Pick learns that his grandmother played a key role in the General Textile Strike of 1934. In many ways, The Bridge spans generations. The grandmother’s story and Pick’s story interconnect in unexpected ways. The Bridge was named best book of 2002 by the Southeastern Bookseller’s Association.

A native of Gastonia, Wiley Cash delves into the history of his boyhood hometown in The Last Ballad. I heard Cash talk about the origins of The Last Ballad when he spoke at the Charlotte Library’s Verse & Vino event in 2017. He mentioned that his parents and grandparents worked in the textile mills in the region, so he grew up having a general familiarity with the history of the textile industry. However, he went on to say that it wasn’t until he was in graduate school that he learned much about the Loray Mill Strike. He became fascinated with Ella May Wiggins, one of the leaders of the strike, and he decided to base The Last Ballad on her short but eventful life. In addition to being a labor organizer, she was a talented singer, and Cash became particularly interested in this aspect of her life. Cash tells the story of Ella May Wiggins through the voice of Ella May’s daughter Lilly, who shares the story of her mother’s life with her nephew some seventy-five years after the 1929 strike. The Last Ballad received the Southern Book Prize and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction.

All three of these novels emphasize the roles that women played in the history of the labor movement in our region. These novels bring to life the struggles of North Carolina’s textile workers and shed light of their efforts to improve their working conditions and provide a better future for their children. As we celebrate Labor Day, I think we should take a moment to reflect on the stories of the textile workers who played such an important role in the history of Charlotte and the surrounding communities. The stories of their lives and struggles are part of Storied Charlotte.

Tags: industrial conflict labor novels labor unions Loray Mill Strike textile industry textile mills textile strike

Gail Z. Martin and the Launching of ConTinual

August 24, 2020 by Mark West

As one of Charlotte’s most prominent writers of fantasy novels, Gail Z. Martin is a frequent guest/speaker at fantasy conventions. This time of the year, Gail is usually making plans to attend Dragon Con, the giant fantasy convention that normally takes place in downtown Atlanta during the Labor Day weekend. For Gail, participating in Dragon Con provides her with an opportunity to promote her latest fantasy novels, and she has several new novels to promote this year, including Sellsword’s Oath, the second volume of her new and critically acclaimed Assassins of Landria epic fantasy series. This year, however, Dragon Con has been turned into a virtual event because of the coronavirus pandemic. In fact, all of the fantasy conventions in the region have been cancelled or converted into online events. For Gail and all of the other fantasy writers and fans who normally flock to these conventions, the shuttering of these events has been a tremendous disappointment.

Anyone who knows Gail would not be surprised to learn that she quickly resolved not to let a measly global pandemic stop her from interacting with her fans and collaborating with her fellow authors. As soon as she realized that Dragon Con and the other area fantasy conventions would have to cancel their in-person gatherings this year, Gail decided to launch ConTinual, an innovative, ongoing, online experience for fantasy writers and fans. ConTinual has its roots in Charlotte,but it has already attracted attention in fandom circles from around the country. I recently contacted Gail and asked her to provide me with an account of ConTinual’s origin story. Here is what she sent to me:

Creating an online, ongoing event bridging a variety of fandoms isn’t a one-person task—it takes a village. Having the idea is the easy part—bringing all the pieces together requires the dedicated commitment of many people.

That’s important to keep front and center, because while I had the idea for ConTinual (the online, ongoing, multi-genre convention that never ends), and I’m its biggest cheerleader and its official ‘face’, I couldn’t do it without a fantastic operating committee of volunteers as well as all of the many, many authors, performers, musicians, vendors, readers, fans, and attendees who make it all happen.

I write epic fantasy, urban fantasy and more as Gail Z. Martin; and as Morgan Brice, I write urban fantasy MM paranormal romance. I’m based in Charlotte, where I live with my husband and frequent co-author Larry N. Martin and our two dogs. I’ve been very involved in NC-based fandom for more than a decade, and in normal years, I’m a guest author/panelist at sci-fi/fantasy and romance conventions up and down the East Coast (and sometimes even farther afield).

One thing I had noticed last year was that Romance authors had a more active and accessible online network of bloggers/reviewers than the science fiction/fantasy community. I’ve seen how valuable that active online network can be to readers and authors, and I had been musing about how we might create something like that to bring multiple fandoms/genres together online, since people read a variety of kinds of books and like a lot of the same movies/shows. (I’m also a huge fan of the TV show Supernatural).

Then I was at Disney World the week everything shut down. Book and fandom conventions both big and small were cancelled. And it hit me that there weren’t going to be conventions for a long while. I’d been talking with Charlotte-based authors John Hartness, Jim McArthur, Theresa Glover, and Nancy Northcott as well as VA/MD-based authors Jeanne Adams and Jean Marie Ward about how fantasy/SF needed to build the kind of online infrastructure that Romance had, and broaden it to include a larger range of fans.

It seemed like the Great Pause would be a perfect time to build an online community, because authors/creators needed an outlet and were at loose end and thus available to do Zoom panels, online readings, performances and more. We also had a ready audience that was bored and looking for diversion. I didn’t just want to do something temporary. I wanted to build an ongoing platform/event/community to last long after the pandemic.

So before breakfast one day while I was still on vacation, I set up the ConTinual Facebook group, and asked one of my cover artists, Natania Barron, to create a logo. And then I messaged my friends and said, “Hey guys, I just did a thing….”

They came in as the original operating committee. We started to plan discussion topics and reach out to our fairly extensive personal networks of authors, musicians, performers, and more to record panels, add programming, and think about how we could make ConTinual a great experience for everyone and keep it going long after the ‘current unpleasantness’ fades. We’re currently building out a website, as well as content on YouTube, Discord and Twitch. Right now, we’re focusing hard on holiday programming, to add some geeky good will to the upcoming season. We hope to be constantly evolving and growing, so that there’s always something new. Anyone who wants to learn more about ConTinual should click on the following link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ConTinual/?tn-str=*F

Launching ConTinual has been a challenging project for Gail, but it has not diverted her from her many writing projects. One of Charlotte’s more prolific authors, Gail is especially well known for her fantasy adventure novels. She has published more than 30 novels and short story collections, not counting the ten or so novels that she has co-written with her husband, Larry Martin. For more information about Gail’s many books, please click on the following link: https://ascendantkingdoms.com/ As Gail sees it, launching ConTinual and writing her fantasy novels are not really separate activities—they are more like different sides of her role as a player in the larger drama that is Storied Charlotte.

Tags: book and fandom conventions epic fantasy fandom fantasy adventure novels Romance authors science fiction/fantasy community urban fantasy

Sandy Hill’s Charlotte Mysteries

August 17, 2020 by Mark West

Since launching my Storied Charlotte blog in February of this year, I have become increasingly aware of the many Charlotte authors who once worked as reporters or editors for The Charlotte Observer. I have featured a number of these former Observer employees on my blog, including Tommy Tomlinson, Dannye Romine Powell, Patricia Cornwell, Jodie Jaffe, and Kathleen Purvis. With this week’s blog post, I am adding Sandy Hill to this list.

Hill moved to Charlotte in the 1960s, and she worked as an editor for the Observer for many years.She also, however, has written historical novels and cozy mysteries, including the just-released Shadow Dance. Like two of her other mysteries, Shadow Dance is set in Charlotte. I recently contacted Hill and asked her about how living in Charlotte has influenced her career as a novelist. Here is what she sent to me:

All but one of my novels are set in North Carolina. Tangled Threads is set in a mythical Tar Heel cotton mill village in the late 1890s. A visit to the exhibit “From Cotton Fields to Skyscrapers” at the Levine Museum of the New South piqued my interest, and I ended up writing the story of two girls who grew up in a mill village, one leaving and the other staying and how their lives intertwined. That called for a sequel, Kate & Delia, also set in a North Carolina mill village, about what happened later.

The Blue Car is a coming-of-age story set in the North Carolina foothills and deals with difficult choices and the courage to stand up for what is right. I wrote the opening sentence 20 years ago at a writing workshop in South Carolina.: “They came for her in a blue car.” That line stayed in my mind for years. Finally, I sat down with the opening line and let the novel unfold from there.

Three of my cozy mysteries are set in Charlotte: Deadline for Death, An Ice Day to Die, and Shadow Dance. All of them feature journalists. Deadline for Death, with my sleuth, Erin Markham, deals with murder at a fictional Charlotte newspaper. It gives a behind-the-scenes look at a big-city newsroom. An Ice Day to Die takes my intrepid newspaper editor Erin to an ice-skating competition in Charlotte. I’ve competed in skating competitions as an older adult and had one appearance in the chorus line of Ice Capades when it came to Charlotte some years ago. I drew on that background, plus more research for Ice Day to Die. Shadow Dance is set in Charlotte but has a visiting journalist, not Erin. It draws on my brief foray into ballroom dancing and includes rock climbing at Crowders Mountain.

One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about writing is talking to Charlotte book clubs about my novels and the process of writing. It’s interesting as a writer to see what readers think of your darlings. Readers who want to know more about me can visit my author page: amazon.com/author/sandyhillnovels.

By setting several of her mystery novels in Charlotte, Sandy Hill is not just writing about what she knows; she is also providing Charlotte readers with the added pleasure that comes from recognizing the places that figure in Hill’s Storied Charlotte.

Tags: books set in Charlotte cozy mysteries historical novels

Charlotte’s Food Writers

August 10, 2020 by Mark West

Earlier this month, Charlotte lost one of its leading food writers. Helen Moore, The Charlotte Observer’s food writer from 1966 to 2007, died on August 3, 2020. During her long career as a food journalist, Moore did much more than share recipes and cooking tips. She wrote about food traditions in the South, interviewed prominent North Carolinians about the role that food played in their lives, and commented on the changing food scene in Charlotte. Moore earned an honored place in the pantheon of Charlotte food writers.

Like Moore, most of the prominent food writers from Charlotte have written about the food of the South, and this focus is reflected in the titles of some of their books. Betty Feezor, the host of a popular cooking show that ran on WBTV from 1953 to 1977, published her most famous book, Betty Feezor’s Carolina Recipes, in 1964. Eudora Garrison, the first food editor for The Charlotte Observer, published a cookbook titled Eudora Garrison’s Favorite Carolina Recipes from Carolina Kitchens in 1967. Amy Rogers, a food commentator on Charlotte’s NPR station WFAE, published Red Pepper Fudge and Blue-Ribbon Biscuits: Favorite Recipes & Stories from North Carolina State Fair Winners in 1995 and Hungry for Home: Stories of Food from Across the Carolinas in 2004. More recently, Charlotte writers Kathleen Purvis and Ashli Quesinberry Stokes have published noteworthy books about food in the South.

Kathleen Purvis is currently Charlotte’s best-known food writer. From 1989 to 2019, she served as the food editor for The Charlotte Observer. In this capacity, she wrote articles and regular columns about the food scene in Charlotte as well as articles about regional and national topics related to food. She has also published numerous articles about food and drink in popular magazines, such as Southern Living, Garden & Gun, and Our State: Celebrating North Carolina. In addition to her countless articles and columns, Purvis has written three books, all of which have been published at UNC Press. Her venture into book writing came about as a result of meeting Elaine Maisner, an editor at UNC Press, at a food-related event. Maisner was about to launch a series of cookbooks under the heading of Savor the South. Her idea was that each book in the series would feature one quintessential Southern ingredient. Purvis liked the idea, and she ended up writing two books in the series: Pecans: A Savor the South Cookbook (2012) and Bourbon: A Savor the South Cookbook (2013). She then went on to write her third book, Distilling the South: A Guide to Southern Craft Liquors, which UNC Press published in 2018. For more information about Purvis and her publications, please click on the following link: https://kathleenpurvis.com/about/

Ashli Quesinberry Stokes is a Professor of Communication Studies and former Director of the Center for the Study of the New South at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Stokes is a specialist in the field of food studies, writing about Southern food in academic journal articles and for popular outlets such as Zocalo Public Square, Academic Minute, Charleston Post & Courier, and The Counter. She regularly teaches a course on Southern Foodways, is working with the UNCC Botanical Garden to create an interpretive garden based on North Carolina food, and will be engaging in a Fulbright comparing Scottish and Appalachian food traditions in Spring 2021 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her interest in Southern foodways is reflected in her book Consuming Identity: The Role of Food in Redefining the South, which she co-authored with Wendy Atkins-Sayre. The University Press of Mississippi published this book in 2016 as part of their Race, Rhetoric, and Media Series. I recently contacted Stokes and asked her how her experiences in Charlotte have influenced her research in the area of Southern foodways. Here is what she sent me:

Shortly after moving to Charlotte in 2006, I began working on a journal article about how food organizations use a variety of communication strategies to attract new members in order to help cultivate change in local food systems. I had no idea then that what started with researching the Charlotte chapter of Slow Food International would begin my own enthusiastic involvement in the city’s vibrant food culture and serve as a research “lab” for writing Consuming Identity.

Although our book is an exploration of the persuasive messages that Southern food sends and how they help shape people’s identities in the region overall, Charlotte’s restaurants, markets, food-based events, and food and drink related businesses sure have a lot to say. The city balances on the edge of newer and older forms of Southern food culture, and it is fascinating. For example, we went to the Mallard Creek Presbyterian Church Barbecue in north Charlotte, held since 1929. We watched in fascination as police kept the interstate exit traffic moving as thousands of people sought a plate and a handshake with a political candidate in the drive through line. We also went to the Poplar Tent Presbyterian Church Barbecue in Concord to learn about its own long-standing tradition; however, we ended up talking to the church matriarchs about their special desserts, people behind us waiting patiently to get a slice of Mrs. Margaret Ann’s chocolate pie or JoAnna Goff’s five flavor pound cake. Later, we sampled pad Thai made with zucchini and sweet potato noodles at a vegan cafe in South End, wandering happily through South End Market afterward to chat with local farmers selling everything from impressive mushrooms, goat cheese, hydroponic microgreens, and edible flowers. After sampling Price’s famous fried chicken, seated in the grass outside watching the Light Rail glide by, we headed Uptown to watch mixologists use rum and rye from Charlotte distilleries to craft the latest “it” cocktail.

Although the food and drink were delicious, people’s stories were better. We talked with women like Tori and Mia, the Cake Makin’ Sisters, trying to start a minority-owned business and land a spot on a food television program. We learned about a Chinese immigrant who stir-fried okra in his restaurant rather than deep frying it in the way some residents were used to. We met suburban moms who made amazing Southern cakes and used Instagram to sell them while their kids napped. Manolo Betancur told us about his bakery’s weekly deliveries up to the North Carolina state line, bringing a taste of churros and Latin American breads to the migrant workers.

We analyzed many food messages while writing the book, but one was clear: Charlotteans, like their foods, are many things. The changing South can be experienced (and appreciated) simply by taking a delicious bite. I plan on continuing my communication research in Charlotte’s food culture once the pandemic eases: attending a Soul Food Sessions dinner, designed to showcase the city’s African American chefs, going to a TasteMakers Meet Up, a food hobbyist club, and supporting the small restaurants that need our business. There’s so much to learn about the city’s people through its food, and I can’t wait to get out again.

Over the years, the food writers of Charlotte have helped define the nature of Southern foodways. These writers have shown how Southern food and storytelling go together like shrimp and grits. Here’s to Helen Moore, Betty Feezor, Eudora Garrison, Amy Rogers, Kathleen Purvis, Ashli Quesinberry Stokes, and all of the other food writers from Charlotte. My appreciation goes to all of them for their contributions to Storied Charlotte.

Tags: cookbooks food journalist food traditions food writers foodways southern cookbooks southern food southern living

Theresa Payton: Charlotte’s Cybersecurity Expert and Author of Manipulated

August 04, 2020 by Angie Williams

Theresa Payton, an expert in the field of cybersecurity and long-time resident of Charlotte, recently published Manipulated: Inside the Cyberwar to Hijack Elections and Distort the Truth (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020). Payton is uniquely well qualified to write this book. She served as the White House Chief Information Officer for President George W. Bush, after which she founded Fortalice Solutions, a leading cybersecurity consulting firm. In Manipulated, she draws on her experience and expertise to explain how Russia and other foreign and domestic powers are using artificial intelligence and cyberattacks to influence American elections. She goes into detail about what she calls “the manipulator’s playbook,” and she provides readers with practical advice on how to avoid being manipulated in this way.

Payton’s book has been out for only a few months, but it is already drawing widespread attention and praise. The reviewer for Booklist, for example, wrote “Payton, an expert in cybersecurity, sounds a clarion call that our political process is at risk and explains why and how it is being assailed by foreign and domestic enemies of democracy. Many conservatives may want to dismiss Payton’s arguments, since she places much of the blame for the situation at the feet of current Republican leadership. But Payton can’t be dismissed as a liberal Democratic cynic, since her credentials are firmly rooted in the work she did for the George W. Bush administration. Payton clearly knows her stuff, [and] she paints a timely, frightening picture.”

Payton is a well-known player in Charlotte’s cybersecurity circles. Since the mid-1990s, she has helped Charlotte’s banking community improve the security of their banking technology and IT systems. She has also shared her expertise with Charlotte’s general public by giving televised presentations on WBTV on “Protecting Your Cyberturf,” and by participating in UNC Charlotte’s Cybersecurity Symposium. I recently reached out to Payton and asked her about her Charlotte connections. Here is what she sent to me:

I had a unique opportunity due to the financial services industry to move to Charlotte, NC. I moved here in 1995 and in my mind, I thought it would be a great place to “stay for a couple of years.” It’s now 2020 and I never really left! Funny enough, when my husband first left the US Navy, we had said our goal was to move to Washington, DC; however, our jobs brought us to Charlotte. When offered a position to work for President George W. Bush at the White House, we debated on whether or not to make a move to Washington, DC. We decided the best place to live and raise our family would be Charlotte, so I made the commute each week for almost 2.5 years.

Living in Charlotte means I have easy access to incredibly smart and talented colleagues, a variety of parks and gardens and to direct flights to almost any place in the world. I do most of my idea generation with smart people all around Charlotte. I think through my book ideas while I am on my runs around our beautiful city. For my recent book, Manipulated, guess where my writing desk was? American Airlines planes going to and from Charlotte. I’ve logged over 1.5 million air miles! That’s a lot of time to dedicate to writing. I am proud to call Charlotte home and have been delighted to have the support of Charlotte citizens who have purchased and promoted my books, and from Park Road Books. It’s one of the best indie bookstores in the nation, and it’s right here!

When I was talking with Sherri Smith from Park Road Books about Payton’s Manipulated, she referred to Payton as one of Charlotte’s most prominent writers of nonfiction. Sherri’s comment caused me to reflect a bit about Charlotte’s community of readers and writers. Charlotte, of course, is home to many gifted fiction writers. It is important to remember, however, that Storied Charlotte includes some very influential writers of nonfiction, including Theresa Payton.

The Love of Baseball Stories

July 27, 2020 by Mark West

When I first moved to Charlotte in 1984, I lived just a few blocks from Crockett Park where the Charlotte O’s (the city’s minor league baseball team at the time) played their home games. The park featured an aging wooden stadium that looked like it belonged in a Norman Rockwell painting, and I fell in love with it. I purchased season tickets and attended almost every home game. I didn’t care that much about the outcome of the games; I just liked the ambiance. This immersive experience introduced me to the world of baseball stories. I loved listening to the old-time fans tell stories about famous baseball players who once played for the Charlotte O’s. I enjoyed hearing tales about the colorful Crockett family that owned the team. I took an interest in the stories about the history of baseball in Charlotte, and I became intrigued with the connections between baseball and Charlotte’s textile mills. Every time I went to a game, I felt like I was dipping into a book of stories that all had something to do with baseball.

This summer the city’s current minor league baseball team—the Charlotte Knights—is on hiatus because of the coronavirus pandemic, but that doesn’t mean that baseball stories have come to an end. Charlotte writer Chris Arvidson and her collaborator Diana Nelson have provided area baseball fans with a collection of essays about the joys of being a baseball fan. Titled The Love of Baseball: Essays by Lifelong Fans, this recently published book includes contributions by numerous writers from the Charlotte area. Chris currently lives in Charlotte, where she teaches in UNC Charlotte’s English Department. I contacted Chris Arvidson and asked her about the book’s connections to Charlotte. Here is what she sent to me:

The book has so many connections to Charlotte. Of course, my husband, Henry Doss, is in the book, and he’s the ultimate Charlotte connection. He’s how I ended up in Charlotte. Henry was running D.G. Martin’s congressional campaign for the open NC-9 seat. I was working at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in D.C. The race was in everybody’s top 10 in the country in 1984. My job was to keep track of what DG and Henry were up to. I have no idea why I even liked these guys because they were the bane of my existence that election cycle, always making decisions and doing stuff without telling me until after the fact. I swear, the only time I ever got in trouble with the boss was when these two were involved. That’s how Henry and I got together, after hundreds of hours on the phone. But I digress…

I have a way of sniffing out fellow baseball fans. I’m not sure what gives us away. It may be that I illicit baseball interest with my attire, which out of the classroom, consists almost entirely of Detroit Tigers’ themed stuff, with a bit of Pittsburgh, Nationals, and Orioles thrown in. I think that’s how UNC Charlotte Dean Nancy Gutierrez and I sussed each other out. She’s a diehard Cleveland Indians fan. She told a wonderfully poignant story of listening to games on the radio, and scoring tickets to games with a good report card.

I met Rebecca Bratcher Laxton, one of the contributors to the collection, when I was a guest speaker at a graduate class at UNC Charlotte. During my presentation, I mentioned the project. Rebecca contacted me the next day, and she ended up writing a wonderful piece about being a girl who wants to play baseball.

Julie Townsend doesn’t live in Charlotte anymore, but she taught in the English Department at UNC Charlotte for years and that’s where I first knew her. We met up again at the dump in Ashe County, where we both lived for a time. We always laughed about seeing one another at the dump, looking twice and saying at the same time, “Don’t I know you?” We went on to start a writing salon in West Jefferson and editing two anthologies together. Julie knows nada about baseball, but her great friend and real estate colleague Martin Little had a shot at the show, so with a little coaching on baseball terminology, Julie was able to tell a wonderful story about Martin and his brief sojourn in professional baseball.

Caroline Kane Kenna is the President of Charlotte Writers Club. Caroline’s got deep roots in the New River country of Virginia, and she wrote a lovely piece for an anthology I co-edited called Reflections on the New River: New Essays, Poems and Personal Stories. Once again, baseball fans can smell each other and a t-shirt was the giveaway. Caroline’s family team is the Cardinals and she was delighted to set aside her poetry for an essay about her St. Louis team.

When I told longtime UNC Charlotte Professor Emeritus Sam Watson what I was up to with a baseball book, he said right away, “Oh, you’ve got to get up with Ellyn Ritterskamp—she’d be perfect.” Ellyn, who teaches in the Philosophy Department at the university, and was one of Sam’s former students, has worked for the Charlotte Observer for years, too. She’s a fellow baseball freak, and we hit it off right away. She writes a wonderful story about her travels, many with her mom Julie, to baseball parks around the country. She’s been to all of the Major League Baseball stadiums, the South Atlantic League and the Carolina League. Now, that’s a serious fan. Of course, Sam ended up in the book as well. He’s one of my baseball fan “recruits” and has come over to baseball fandom in recent years via college baseball and Charleston’s minor league team.

Stephen Ward had the whole fan package to my mind. He’s from Michigan and he is a serious Detroit fan. We spied each other’s Tiger hats at UNC Charlotte’s archeological dig in Jerusalem. Stephen wrote a piece about growing up with the Tigers. Before he moved to Hawaii to take on a new job in higher ed, he was Associate Vice Chancellor of University Communications at UNC Charlotte.

In fact, nine of the contributors to the book have Charlotte connections, and as every baseball fan knows, it takes nine to make a team.

My thanks go to Chris and her collaborators for sharing their passion for baseball. For all of the Charlotte baseball fans who are missing the experience of watching the Charlotte Knights play in their beautiful new stadium, The Love of Baseball provides a chance to connect with fellow baseball fans. These essays tap into the pleasure that comes with sharing baseball stories. Although these essays are not about the history of Charlotte’s various baseball teams, they have their place in the great compendium of Storied Charlotte.

Tags: baseball baseball fans

And the Winner Is…Alicia D. Williams

July 20, 2020 by Mark West

Charlotte is home to many successful children’s authors, but only a few have won the big awards in children’s literature, such as the Caldecott Medal, the Newbery Medal, and the Coretta Scott King Award. Fifty years ago, Gail Haley became the first children’s author from Charlotte to win one of these awards when her picture book A Story, A Story won the Caldecott Medal. The latest Charlotte children’s author to enter this winners’ circle is Alicia D. Williams. Her 2019 debut novel, Genesis Begins Again, is making a big splash in the world of children’s literature. She recently received both a Newbery Honor and the Coretta Scott King-John Steptoe Author Award for New Talent for this novel. For more information about Williams, please click on the following link: https://www.aliciadwilliams.com/

Genesis Begins Again, which is intended for middle school readers, focuses on a thirteen-year-old girl named Genesis Anderson. Genesis lacks confidence and has a low sense of self-esteem. She keeps a list of 96 reasons she hates herself, and one of these reasons is that she thinks her skin is too dark. Her grandmother often makes hurtful comments about Genesis’s dark skin complexion, and these comments have a negative impact on Genesis.

Genesis has internalized a form of racism known as “colorism.” In a recent interview, Williams discussed this aspect of her novel. The story, she said, “evolved to be about colorism–discrimination within the same ethnic group based on skin tone and facial features. … I continued to see children of color–every colonized country has a colorism issue–struggle with self-acceptance and self-love based on skin color and hair texture. The need to speak to them was the driving force of completing this story.”

Fortunately, for Genesis, her life gradually changes when she moves to a new school and has a chance to begin again. She makes new friends, and she comes to the attention of a music teacher who recognizes her musical talent. Her teacher introduces her to Billie Holiday and other great jazz singers, and Genesis begins to look to these jazz greats as positive role models. In many ways, the second half of this book celebrates the life-affirming power of music.

When I read that Alicia Williams received the Coretta Scott King-John Steptoe New Talent Award for 2020, I flashed back to the day I spent with John Steptoe toward the end of his life. I was interviewing him for my book Trust Your Children: Voices Against Censorship in Children’s Literature, but we ended up talking about much more than censorship. One of the points he made during our conversation was that the children’s book world needs more books by African American authors. To this end, this award was established after his death to promote “new talent and to offer visibility to excellence in writing and/or illustration” by African American children’s authors/illustrators. Given my personal association with John Steptoe, I am especially pleased that Williams received this “new talent” award. Our community is a richer place because of the talent that Alicia Williams brings to Storied Charlotte.

Tags: colorism Coretta Scott King-John Steptoe Author Award middle school readers Newbery Honor

Novels Set in the Charlotte Area

July 06, 2020 by Mark West

A reader of my Storied Charlotte blog recently sent me an email in which she asked, “Are there any novels set in Charlotte?” I responded by sending her a list of five novels that take place in Charlotte, but her question sparked my curiosity. I started researching this topic, and I soon realized that my initial list of five novels was way too short. I then decided to compile a list of ten novels set in Charlotte, and then I upped it to a dozen, and I finally settled on a list of twenty novels set in the Charlotte area. However, I knew that I should not write about twenty novels in one blog post, so I ended up dividing my list into two lists. In last week’s Storied Charlotte blog post, I wrote about ten works of genre fiction set in Charlotte. For this week’s post, my focus is on more mainstream or literary novels that take place in the Charlotte area. In each of these novels, the setting plays an integral role in the novel.

The Ada Decades by Paula Martinac is set in Charlotte between 1947 and 2015. Published by Bywater Books in 2017, this novel focuses on the evolving relationship between Ada Shook, who works as a librarian in a Charlotte public school, and Cam Lively, who teaches English in the same school. Ada and Cam become involved in the struggle to integrate the Charlotte public schools. At the same time that they are fighting racial prejudice, they also have to deal with the prevailing prejudice that lesbians faced during the time period portrayed in the novel. The Ada Decades is steeped in Charlotte history and culture, and it even includes a reference to the house where Carson McCullers started writing The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. For more information about Martinac, please see the Storied Charlotte blog post for June 22, or click on the following link: http://paulamartinac.com/

The City on the Hill is Marian Sims’s 1940 novel in which an idealistic lawyer named Steve Chandler takes on bigotry and corruption in Charlotte, which is called Medbury within the context of the novel. Sims grew up in Georgia, but she and her lawyer husband moved to Charlotte in 1930 and became residents of the Myers Park neighborhood. Her husband went on to become a local judge, and Sims drew on her husband’s experiences as a lawyer and judge when writing The City on the Hill. The publication of Sims’s novel sparked controversy in Charlotte, and several church leaders and police officials made it known that they were not pleased with the book. However, the book received excellent reviews. One reviewer proclaimed that “Mrs. Sims knows her stuff” and added that “the double problem of conflict between generations and reform of a small southern city are really integrated with the personalities of the chief characters.” Sims died in Charlotte in 1961. Her papers are located in the Special Collections Department of the Atkins Library at UNC Charlotte. For more information about Sims and her books, please click on the following link: https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/sims-marian

Clover by Dori Sanders is a children’s novel set just south of Charlotte in York County, South Carolina. Originally published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 1990, this novel is told from the point of view of Clover, a ten-year-old African American girl whose father dies in an automobile accident just hours after marrying a white woman named Sara Kate. The novel deals with evolving relationship between Clover and Sara Kate as they get to know each other through the medium of food. The family peach orchard and farm stand figure prominently in this novel. Although Clover takes place about twenty miles south of Charlotte, there are a number of references to Charlotte in the book. Sara Kate, for example, spends her Sundays reading The Charlotte Observer. Following the success of Clover, Sanders rented an office in Charlotte in order to have a quiet place to write. Clover is the winner of the Lillian Smith Award for Southern literature that enhances racial awareness. For more information about Sanders and her books, please click on the following link: https://scafricanamerican.com/honorees/dori-sanders/

Lookaway, Lookaway is Wilton Barnhardt’s satirical novel about the foibles of an upper-crust family living in the Myers Park neighborhood of Charlotte. Published in 2013, Lookaway, Lookaway explores how the changes associated with the rise of the New South ripple through the lives of a family that has deep roots in the Old South. Jerene Jarvis Johnston, the matriarch of this family, does her best to keep up some semblance of gentility and prevent her family from disintegrating, but the rest of the family members behave in ways that make it difficult for her to maintain the family’s reputation. In writing this novel, Barnhardt drew on his childhood memories of spending his summers in Charlotte with his aunt, who lived in Dilworth. Currently Barnhardt is a creative writing professor at North Carolina State University. For more information about Barnhardt and his books, please click on the following link: https://www.wiltonbarnhardt.com/

The Queen of Hearts, Kimmery Martin’s debut novel, came out in 2018. As a former emergency room physician in Charlotte, Martin is very familiar with the inner-workings of Charlotte’s medical community, and this background is reflected in The Queen of Hearts. Reviewers of this novel often refer to it as a medical drama, for much of the story is set in a Charlotte hospital. At its core, this novel is about the evolving friendship between Zadie Anson (a pediatric cardiologist) and Emma Colley (a trauma surgeon). These women first became friends in medical school, and both go on to pursue successful medical careers in Charlotte. Their friendship, however, is threatened when secrets from their medical school days start to surface. For more information about Martin and her books, please click on the following link: https://www.kimmerymartin.com/

The Skin Artist by George Hovis is set in Charlotte during the boom decade of the 1990s. Published in 2019, The Skin Artist is Hovis’s first novel, but it is not his first book. He published a scholarly work titled Vale of Humility: Plain Folk in Contemporary North Carolina Fiction in 2007. The Skin Artist traces the fall and eventual redemption of Bill Becker. Of the course of the summer of 1998, he goes from being a successful business manager living with his wife in a gated-community in the suburbs of Charlotte to losing nearly everything. As his life and career disintegrate, he becomes involved with a heavily tattooed dancer named Lucy, who works in a strip club in Charlotte. Bill sinks deeper and deeper into Charlotte’s underworld, accumulating tattoos along the way, until he hits rock bottom. Eventually he and Lucy leave Charlotte and go to rural Gaston County, where he grew up, and there they begin to rebuild their lives. Hovis dicusses the writing of The Skin Artist in a length interview with Paula Eckard. To read this interview, please click on this link: https://issuu.com/eastcarolina/docs/2020_nclr_online-final/44

The Slow Way Back, Judy Goldman’s first novel, came out in 1999, and it went on to win the Sir Walter Raleigh Fiction Award. Thea McKee, the central character in this novel, has family roots in Charlotte’s Jewish community, but she knows little about her family history. She is married to a non-Jewish man, and she does not think of herself as being religious. However, when she acquires a series of eight letters written by her grandmother in the 1930s, she begins to delve into her Jewish heritage. The letters are written in Yiddish, which she cannot read, so she arranges to have the letters translated. In the process, she uncovers a series of family secrets that span three generations. Although The Slow Way Back focuses on one family, it sheds light on the experiences of other Southern Jews who call Charlotte home. For more information about Goldman and her books, please click on the following link: http://judygoldman.com/about-judy/

Tomorrow’s Bread, Anna Jean Mayhew’s historical novel set in Charlotte in 1961, shows how Charlotte’s urban renewal program affected the lives of the people whose homes and neighborhoods were destroyed to make room for new real estate projects. Published in 2019, this novel provides a vivid portrait of daily life in the African American neighborhood of Brooklyn just before it was bulldozed. As Mayhew explained during an interview, she focuses on three characters: “Loraylee, the narrator who opens Tomorrow’s Bread, was my initial inspiration for the novel. She’s a young black woman who works at the S&W Cafeteria. … The next voice I heard was that of the Reverend Ebenezer Polk, a mid-50’s educated black minister and community leader in Brooklyn. … My third point-of-view character is a 51-year-old white woman from Myers Park. … She’s married to a real estate lawyer who is on the planning commission that will ultimately decide the fate of Brooklyn.” For more information about Mayhew and her books, please click on the following link: http://annajeanmayhew.com/

Whisper My Name, the first of many books that Burke Davis wrote over the course of his long life, came out in 1949. Davis set this novel in Charlotte, but he changed the name of the city to Elizabeth. Daniel Gordon, the central character in the novel, also undergoes a name change. The child of immigrant Jewish parents living in Philadelphia, he was born with the name of Daniel Goldstein. However, when he moves to North Carolina in 1910, he changes his name and creates a new identity for himself. He joins a Baptist Church and attempts to hide his Jewish background as he starts a retail business. The story of Daniel’s conflicted life touches on the difficulties that Jews faced in the South during this period. Davis loosely based this character on an executive at Ivey’s Department Store. In writing this novel, Davis drew on his ten years of experience as a reporter and editor for the Charlotte News. For more information about Davis and his books, please click on the following link: https://www.nclhof.org/inductees/2000-2/burke-davis/

The Woman in Our House is by the bestselling Charlotte author Andrew Hartley, but in this case, he uses the pen name of Andrew Hart. Published in June 2019, The Woman in Our House is set in Myers Park. The novel deals with a young family that has just had their second child. The mother, Anna Klein, decides that she wants to resume her career as a high-powered literary agent, so they contact a nanny agency in an effort to find a live-in nanny. They end up hiring Oaklynn Durst, who is listed as a Mormon woman from Utah on her application, even though Anna has some initial misgivings about her. At first, the arrangement seems to go well, but then the young children start to experience puzzling injuries and illnesses. These problems prompt Anna to take a closer look into Oaklynn’s past, and as a result of her investigation, she gradually uncovers a series of disturbing deceptions and dark secrets. As the plot unfolds, the family’s beautiful Myers Park home takes on a frightening and foreboding feel. For more information about Hartley and his books, please click on the following link: https://ajhartley.net/meet-author-aj-hartley/

While researching the aforementioned novels, I noticed a theme that applies to most of the books, and that theme can be summed up by the phrase “things are not as they seem.” Most of the characters in these novels have secrets. Myers Park figures in a number of these novels, but in these stories, this affluent neighborhood is not nearly as serene and genteel as it appears when one is driving down Queens Road. These novels scratch at Charlotte’s surface and look behind the facades. As portrayed in the pages of these novels, Storied Charlotte is a complex place, full of contradictions, but rich in narrative possibilities.

Tags: literary novels novel

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