{"id":57551,"date":"2019-02-14T01:23:01","date_gmt":"2019-02-14T01:23:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=57551"},"modified":"2019-02-14T01:23:01","modified_gmt":"2019-02-14T01:23:01","slug":"finding-edna-ferbers-showboat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=57551","title":{"rendered":"Finding Edna Ferber\u2019s Showboat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Finding Edna Ferber\u2019s <\/strong><\/em>Showboat<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

David Cecelski: New writing, collected essays, latest discoveries<\/a>
\n2018-03-10<\/p>\n

David Cecelski<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"Souvenir<\/a>
\nSouvenir program from the world premier of the first Showboat<\/em><\/a> movie in 1929. Courtesy, Beinecke Library, Yale University<\/a><\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

I don\u2019t know how the great American novelist, short story writer and playwright Edna Ferber<\/a> heard about the little river town of Winton, N.C.<\/a><\/p>\n

But I know she did. In a collection of her research notes that I found at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library<\/a> at Yale when I was in New Haven, Conn.<\/a> last summer, she scratched the following:<\/p>\n

Winton, N.C.\u2014The Croatans<\/a>, relic of the lost Roanoke Island<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

settlement. Tar River<\/a>. White negroes.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Winton is a no-stoplight town in Hertford County<\/a>, on the Chowan River<\/a> (not the Tar River<\/a>), in a rural part of northeastern N.C.<\/a>, between the Albemarle Sound<\/a> and the Great Dismal Swamp<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I was a surprised to find a reference to Winton in the notes of a New York<\/a> writer like Edna Ferber.<\/p>\n

I was also a little surprised to discover a reference to Winton in an archive like the Beinecke Library, a sleek, modern, glass-walled vault of literary and historical treasures in the heart of Yale\u2019s campus.<\/p>\n

So of course I had to wonder: why was Edna Ferber interested in Winton? And what did the Croatan Indians<\/a> and the \u201clost Roanoke settlement<\/a>\u201d\u2014the Lost Colony\u2014have to do with anything? And last but not least, what did she mean by \u201cwhite negroes\u201d?<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s post, I\u2019d like to explore those questions. By the end of considering them, I hope we will understand northeastern N.C.\u2019s history a little better and understand where Edna Ferber found at least some of the inspiration for her most popular and enduring literary work…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In today\u2019s post, I\u2019d like to explore those questions. By the end of considering them, I hope we will understand northeastern N.C.\u2019s history a little better and understand where Edna Ferber found at least some of the inspiration for her most popular and enduring literary work…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,1196,8,6462,20],"tags":[11282,29448,5634,8278,879,29449,12682],"class_list":["post-57551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-chowan-discovery-group","tag-david-cecelski","tag-edna-ferber","tag-marvin-jones","tag-north-carolina","tag-showboat","tag-winton-triangle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57551"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57553,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57551\/revisions\/57553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}