The Black Swan
In celebration of Black History Month, I salute Elizabeth Greenfield (1819-1876), a Mississippi slave whose golden voice was her ticket to freedom. Born on a Natchez, Mississippi, plantation, Elizabeth was taken as an infant to Philadelphia by her owner, Holliday Greenfield. After joining the Society of Friends (Quakers), Mrs. Greenfield freed and adopted her charge. As Elizabeth grew up and showed a natural flair for singing, she astonished Mrs. Greenfield with the power and range of her voice and her self-taught skills on the guitar. Recognizing a remarkable talent, Mrs. Greenfield sought formal training, but could find no Philadelphia voice coach willing to jeopardize his professional reputation with a student of color, even at three times the going rate of...
Read MoreWhistling “Dixie” in Brazil
When I was traveling across Brazil some years ago, a Rio lady noticed my Southern accent and asked if I’d heard about an old Confederate colony somewhere below Sao Paolo. I thought she was kidding until a little homework confirmed that, sure enough, thousands of former confederates, or confederados as they’re called in the local Portuguese, immigrated to Brazil in 1866, following the South’s defeat in the Civil War, and founded a town called Americano. The colonists came at the invitation of Emperor Dom Pedro II, a far-thinking monarch interested in promoting agriculture throughout his empire. He appealed to the bruised dignity of Southern cotton planters who had lost everything in the war and were chafing under Union domination. The emperor’s trump card, albeit...
Read MoreYellow Fever
Historical fiction authors spend about as much time researching as writing the actual book, always on the lookout for something to give our stories that special spin. Because the four real-life principals in my upcoming novel, Goat Castle Murder, were all wildly eccentric, I figured there had to be more where they came from, i.e., Natchez, Mississippi. Now the quintessential sleepy Southern town, Natchez once boasted more millionaires per capita than any place but New York, and I quickly discovered my quirky quartet was just the tip of a picturesque iceberg. Consider Jake and Jim Surget, brothers who so despised each other that their house, Cherry Grove, had a chalk line dividing it in two with neither allowed access to the other’s half. Three spinster sisters...
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