Today we continue the series
in which award-winning nonfiction authors discuss the joys and challenges of
the research process with an essay by Ray Anthony Shepard. Thank you, Ray.
Researching nonfiction stories can spring from public history
displays—monuments, plaques, street signs, and old tombstones. That was the
case for my three biographies. Now or Never! 54th Massachusetts
Infantry’s War to End Slavery (2017) grew out of my amazement at Saint-Gaudens’s
Robert Gould Shaw Memorial in Boston; Runaway: The Daring Escape of Ona
Judge (2021) from my visit to the President’s House in Philadelphia;
and Long Time Coming (2023) from a visit to Frederick
Douglass’s final resting place at Mt. Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York.
You don’t have to be a perpetual tourist to find treasures in
public displays of American history. Our public squares are a gold mine of
research opportunities for writers of any age. These historical nuggets are
everywhere. And, they don’t have to be about the well-known or super famous, e.g.,
Amelia Earhart.
In Loup County, Nebraska, there is a state historical marker commemorating
a European homesteader, John Harrop, who in 1909 built a home of cement blocks
along the Calamus River. That marker is an opportunity to ask: Who was Harrop?
Why did he move to Nebraska’s Sand Hills? Why did the state honor him? Those
are the key ingredients needed to write a story of a life or a slice-of-life
episode, e.g., building a home on the banks of a small river.
Start with these questions: why, why, and why. And in seeking answers,
the writer/researcher moves on to information found in primary and secondary
sources: libraries, online archives, old newspapers, speaking with the town
historian, visits to local historical societies, and interviews with people who
knew or were related to the history maker.
I stumbled upon the Ona Judge story when I was visiting my
graduate-student daughter in Philadelphia. We went sightseeing to Independence
Hall, the Liberty Bell, and the recently opened national historic site of the
President’s House where George and Martha Washington lived with eight enslaved
servants. One of those servants was Ona Judge. At the age of twenty-three, with
the help of Black and White abolitionists, she escaped to Portsmouth, New
Hampshire.
Ona Judge piqued my interest and led to more research. A
slave in the President’s House, headquarters of the first government in history—birthed
on the idea that all would be equal. I
decided to write a story that asked the question: Why did Ona run? I wanted
readers to see that slavery, even cloaked in genteel privilege, was
a corruption of the universal desire for freedom and self-dignity.
I also wanted readers to understand the daring courage
required to give up relative material comfort for the uncertainty of a
fugitive’s poverty. What about the human heart that demands freedom? I posed
that question with vernacular reframes: Ona Judge, Ona Judge/ why you runaway
Ona Judge?
The public tribute to Ona at the President’s House sparked my
interest to tell her story and give readers a different take on slavery. Not
the vicious work-to-the-death in the cotton fields. But a seemingly kind
enslavement thought of as the best job a slave could have—caring for Martha
Washington, traveling with her to tea parties, ensuring that her appearance was
always elegant and flawless. A different kind of slavery, but never-the-less
enslavement of a human spirit.
Students can find many examples of public history even if they
live in a small town, on a farm, or in a large urban oasis. Such displays can
be like a walnut dropped from a tree, ready to be cracked open by answering a
few questions: Why this person? What did she do? Why is he honored? The most
critical question is: What does the writer want readers to understand about
this history maker?
Ray Anthony’s Shepard’s picture book
biography Runaway: The Daring Escape of Ona Judge received starred reviews
in Kirkus and Publishers Weekly. His young adult
biography Now or Never! 54th Massachusetts
Infantry’s War to End Slavery was a Carter J. Woodson Honor Book and a Kirkus
Best Book of the Year. His young adult verse biography A Long
Time Coming: The Ona Judge to Barack Obama Chronicles will
be published in 2023.
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One Response
A terrific reminder about why asking "WHY" is so important to writing one's NF ms! Congratulations to Ray on his upcoming books!