North Carolina Author’s Novel Explores Role of Women in the South
What does it take to write a groundbreaking novel on the relationships of Southern women, black and white, in the turbulent era between the Civil War and World War II? A time when men marched off to war and their deeds were recorded in history books, while unsung southern heroines went about their lives without the slightest idea they were affecting social and political change?
For Jeri Fitzgerald Board of Tryon, NC and author of The Bed She Was Born In, it started with growing up in a small, close-knit town in Johnston County on the coastal plain of North Carolina—a land of endless fields of cotton and tobacco interrupted by stands of swaying pines and muddy, slow-moving rivers. There Jeri’s introduction to Civil War history and the role of women started early.
“When I was a little girl my father took me, along with my two brothers, to play in the fields and woods around the village of Bentonville, the site of the last major battle of the Civil War,” she says “This area, not yet designated a National Historic Site, provided a wealth of treasures for avid Civil War buffs. We collected minie balls, rusty uniform buttons, sword hilts, and pottery shards. We also played tag on the porch of the Harper House, which served as a Union field hospital during the battle, and is now a museum.”
During these excursions Jeri’s dad regaled his kids with stories about the soldiers who fought there, about the officers who led them, and about their own great-great grandparents who had a farm nearby. She loved hearing about how her great-great grandmother, Sally, defended her home from Union troops during the battle. Sally sent her sons, along with her hogs and a milk cow, to a hide-out in the woods. When she saw the Union soldiers coming toward her front porch, she threw her jewelry into a bushy boxwood beside the steps. After the war ended, she sold that jewelry to help feed her family. This story would play in Jeri’s head for years, and would eventually become the opening chapters of her historical novel, The Bed She Was Born In.
Both parents were powerful influences
“My mother instilled in me a love of art, music, and literature. She was a talented poet, known affectionately by friends and family as, ‘the word merchant,’” says Jeri. “She went to college to study art and design during World War II, but dropped out to marry my dad—a dashing daredevil and pilot. My mom taught me to stand on my own to feet. She admonished me from a young age with: ‘Don’t do what I did. You do not have to get married or have children. The world is your oyster.’
“I was the oldest of four children, so had much responsibility, and my mom’s words stuck. I baked my first cake from scratch at age five, sang my first solo on stage at age seven, and wrote a poem for my grandmother’s birthday card, and decorated the outside using my mom’s water colors, at age eight. She not only let me do these things, she encouraged me. And she always lavished me with praise.”
Jeri says her mom was a model humanitarian, who embraced an attitude of acceptance of all ethnic groups and cultures. This belief was reinforced in the Methodist church where Jeri grew up. She comes from a line of Methodist ministers and was reared on the adage of founder, John Wesley: “Please, God, help me to do all the good that I can, in as many ways as I can, for as many people as I can, for as long as I can.”
“This is the subtle message of faith that guides the everyday activities of the major characters of The Bed She Was Born In,” Jeri says. “Both Millie, who is black, and Anna, who is white, live their lives according to this creed, just as my mother did.”
Jeri reports that her dad was also a strong presence.
“He was a successful businessman, a history buff, a pilot, and raconteur, the kind of talented mimic who made stories come alive. He loved music and dancing, loved to fly, but was a strict disciplinarian. He had high expectations of all of his children. All of us worked in his stores, and out at the farm in the summer. He was proud of his family and his heritage, and passed that sentiment on to his children. Part of growing up in the South is understanding one’s personal history from an early age, and most of it gets passed down through stories. ‘The mouth of the South’ is a living, breathing thing.”
Women who came before made lasting impression
Jeri reports that both of her grandmothers were strong personalities who were ahead of their time in many ways. Her maternal grandmother finished college at age 16 and ran away from her home in Charleston, SC to Washington, DC where she joined the US Navy in 1917.
“She was a pistol, independent and outspoken, a talented writer, and a walking encyclopedia of information,” Jeri says. “She had impeccable manners and such high expectations. I heard adults refer to her as ‘sophisticated.’ My paternal grandmother, on the other hand, was down to earth; she loved to dig in the dirt. I grew up across the street from her and my grandad. I loved sitting on the piano bench with her while she rendered a jaunty tune, singing at the top of her lungs. She was also a devoted animal lover and horsewoman, and someone who knew no fear. A number of the scenes in The Bed She Was Born In are centered on actual events in her life. The snake scene in Part III of the book, which was told to me by my dad, is based on a terrifying experience my grandmother had with a cottonmouth when she was a young woman.”
Author’s career provided inspiration for her writing
After finishing a bachelor’s degree with a double major in English and history at Campbell University, Jeri was hired to teach in the State’s first program for gifted and talented students in Raleigh, North Carolina. She found the job, and her students, delightful.
One rainy Saturday Jeri sat down at the kitchen table in her apartment and wrote 28 pages about her great-great grandfather’s return from fighting in the Civil War to his farm near Bentonville. Then she rolled up the pages and threw them in a dresser drawer—her first foray into writing a novel. This experience would cause her to beef up her classroom curriculum to include more writing activities, and she would continue to teach her students good writing skills for several more years.
In 1978 she was hired by the State Department of Public Instruction as the Coordinator of the Annual Testing Commission, a program initiated by Governor James B Hunt in an effort to improve student achievement. She traveled to schools all over the state to try to determine what factors most influenced positive student results. And her awareness of inequality in education across the state increased. The schools with the greatest tax base had all the things a student would need; those at the low end had practically nothing.
Boys got all the attention
“I sat in the back of classrooms and watched teachers interact with their students. I saw that the boys got all the attention. They were raucous and demanding, even in a well-disciplined classroom. The girls seemed more concerned about popularity and their appearance,” says Jeri. But she also saw the wonderful opportunities for teachers and students in wealthy districts and the total lack of opportunity for them in poor school districts. She says that “the inequity was so great it influenced everything in those schools.” And these experiences were a huge influence in her later writing of The Bed She Was Born In.
In 1982, Jeri embarked on a doctoral program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, which for a century before had been the Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina. She decided to pursue a combined course of study toward a degree in Women’s Leadership Studies and American Women Writers. Her subsequent dissertation was so unusual that it became a full page spread in the People & Places section of the Greensboro News and Record.
“I interviewed women from all walks of life, many were unprepared for the leadership role into which they had been thrust, since Women’s Studies were not a part of the college curriculum then,” says Jeri. “Many had been involved in the Civil Rights Movement, a number of them were so innovative and creative they made traditional thinkers uncomfortable, and a few who were not afraid to sit up at the table and make their presence known. They were a totally new set of players on the field. My mom and grandmothers were so much like these women that I was very much at home with them, and they caused me to want to know more.”
Yet Jeri was still to experience another chapter in her life that would add even more uniqueness to the book she would write. In 1987 she was hired as the first woman and only North Carolinian as Charter Fellow at the University of North Carolina’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching. Governor Hunt envisioned it as a Center where teachers could come for a weeklong renewal seminar, where the topic would be outside of their subject area and emphasize the arts, sciences, and the humanities. It was established in the Great Smokies for the environment they provided.
Seminars deepened understanding
“The seminars I was most interested in planning and leading were those that would help develop North Carolina teachers as writers; those that would provide a better understanding of African-American History and Culture and the Civil Rights Movement; and, those that would celebrate the lives of women, black and white, rich and poor, uneducated and well-versed,” says Jeri. “Each Fellow was in charge of a seminar about every three weeks. I got to know so many talented people from all walks of life--several women and men had marched with Dr. King, and others had been involved in the negotiations of the ICBM Treaties, some had written and recorded Emmy-winning songs, some who had written best sellers.
“Not long after Clyde Edgerton published Raney, I invited him to do a seminar with me. We had a blast, and all of the participants went back to their classrooms imbued with the desire to teach writing—and to continue writing. I mentioned to Clyde that I had had a book bouncing around in my head for years and he encouraged me to write it. That conversation was the jumping off place for this novel.”
After five wonderful years at the Center, Jeri went home to Burlington with no idea of what she might do next. Her husband encouraged her to write “that book that you have talked about for so long.” He told her he would keep her car filled with gas, would pay the bills, and buy the groceries. She says, “That incredible gift from my husband allowed me to take a sharp turn down a new path. I began a journey unlike any other—and it was the hardest work, and the most fun, I have ever had.
“I began teaching African-American Studies part time at Duke, and on the days when I was not in Durham, I sat at my kitchen table with a ball-point pen and filled up dozens of legal pads. I remember writing the opening page of the first chapter of the book seventeen times. When I got stuck, I would go for a long walk and work scenes out in my head; then I would go back to the kitchen and try to get it down. A friend processed all those hand-written sheets and the manuscript turned out to be 568 pages! I was floored. That was in the winter of 1993.
“My husband and I made a calculated decision to go together to St. Andrews Presbyterian College in the early spring of 1994, and the book went in a box on a shelf in my closet, where it gathered dust for most of the next seven years. At the behest of a dear friend, who is a well-known historian and writer, I sent the first 50 pages of the manuscript to his publisher. Then the two of us went out to dinner with this man to get his reaction. I knew immediately that he was uncomfortable, and after a little while, he held up the manuscript and said, ‘You know what’s wrong with this? There’s too much stuff in here about women!’ My reaction was BINGO! I’ve hit it. Needles to say, we did not pursue a contract with him. I came home and put the book back on the closet shelf.”
The title is born
Some time later she and her husband were having dinner with friends whose mother was moving in with them. In putting her coat on the mother’s bed the husband said, “This is the bed she was born in.” Looking at the old handmade walnut rope bed, at the rosewood rocker in the room, Board was reminded of her own grandmother. And the title for her book, The Bed She Was Born In, formed in her mind.
While The Bed She Was Born In celebrates the role of both white and African American women in North Carolina, it reflects Jeri’s years of study of the history and culture of women worldwide.
“I want readers to gain an over-riding feeling from the very beginning of living in the world as women because those issues are as pervasive today as they have been for hundreds of years,” says Jeri. “Recently on TV I watched women and men come to the stage to accept the Oscar at the Academy Awards. I saw the men step immediately to the microphone and take the time to make a little speech, while the women waited in the background. When the men finished, the women would finally step forward and speak in the brief time that was remaining. There are subtle messages like this every day in all strata of our society. They are a carry-over from the days when women prepared the meals, waited on the men at the table while they ate, and got the leftovers after the men had gone.”
This kind of treatment was even more complex in African-American culture. Jeri admires the work of Zora Neale Hurston very much, and her depiction of black women as “mules” throughout much of history is a clear example of the racist and sexist attitudes so inculcated in our society. Hurston saw black women functioning on the lowest rung of the work ladder; they worked for the white man boss, for the white woman boss, and for the black man boss. But black women have made incredible contributions to our history and culture, in spite of the terrific burdens they have had to carry for so long, she says.
In depicting African-American women characters in her novel, Jeri drew on her own personal experiences. One person who made a lasting impression on her was “Aunt Lou,” with whom she shelled peas and shucked fresh corn in her grandmother’s back yard.
“Lou was a tiny lady with a sweet personality, and she was much older than I realized as a child. She was the daughter of a couple who had been born into slavery,” says Jeri. “When my grandparents celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in 1957, Aunt Lou gave each of them a beautiful gold ring, a broad band engraved with vines. I am so fortunate to have the ring Lou gave my grandmother, and I wear it proudly. The woman holding the baby on the cover of The Bed She Was Born In is Aunt Lou, and the tall woman beside her is my grandmother.”
Those experiences taught Jeri the folly of stereotypes.
“Any discrimination is incredibly complex. In the community where I grew up, I know there were other respectful relationships between African Americans and whites. In my small town everybody knew everybody, regardless of their color,” she says. “Everybody knew which white man could not be trusted and everybody knew which black man was making moonshine. In the same way they knew which white woman made the best lemon meringue pie and which black woman had the best contralto. We lived close together and our lives were simply intertwined on a day by day basis.
“Every summer we barned tobacco together….children, teen-agers, adults….black and white; we all worked together. I would have been shunned by my peers in school if I had not done this. My little town of Pine Level was surrounded by farms, and the majority of my schoolmates lived on them. I was a ‘townie,’ and when I was old enough I was up an hour before dawn, so I could drive the truck to pick up the young black men, “the croppers,” who removed the tobacco leaves from the stalks. A middle-aged black woman taught me to hand and string the green tobacco, and to grade the leaves after they were cured. All of us worked around the barns together, drank our soft drinks together at break, and often ate our sack lunches gathered under a shade tree.”
Not surprisingly, these experiences shaped her reaction when she walked into her first high school classroom as a teacher—and later the writing of her novel.
"When I went off to college, segregation was still in effect in the public schools; when I finished my degree and went to work, integration had occurred,” Jeri says. “I was caught off guard when I stood before my students on the first day of school and found that the black students had gathered on one side of the room, and the whites on the other. They had segregated themselves. I put a seating chart together that night for all five of my classes and moved my students to assigned seats the next day. And I planned classroom activities that would force them to talk to, and get to know, one another. Thank goodness that worked."
The Bed She Was Born In is receiving rare praise from reviewers, including John H. Roper, a historian and author of Repairing the March of Mars: The Civil War Diaries of a Steward in the Stonewall Brigade, who writes: “Over the last quarter century, a new writing genre known as ‘historical consciousness’ has emerged, and southern women have seized the baton in this arena. In The Bed She Was Born In, Jeri Fitzgerald Board gives us a tale of courage and endurance, but with a wry sense of humor, and a writing style so stripped of the superfluous that she moves action along as fast as Hemingway—and then clobbers you with a completely unexpected turn of events. This novel could be a companion piece to W.H. Auden’s Any Girl, but it could also be the story of your wife, mother, sister, lover. It is not to be missed.”
Lee Smith, author of Tender Ladies and Family Linen, wrote: “Jeri Board has written a sweeping, important book which illuminates the lives of Southern women, black and white, as they struggle with the harsh realities of sex, race, class, and history. Yet this novel brims with life and love on every page. The Bed She Was Born In is a remarkable achievement--and a great read!”
Suggestions that she prepare a reading and study guide for writers groups, library reading groups, civic and church groups, and classroom discussion are not going unheeded. Contact Jeri if you're interested in hosting an event.
