AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT
Darrell Laurant grew up in Syracuse, NY, graduated from a small college in North
Carolina and spent more than 30 years as a sportswriter, news reporter, editor
and columnist for daily newspapers in Charleston, SC and Lynchburg, VA. Along
the way, Laurant published Even
Here (about a series of bizarre
murders in Bedford County, VA) and A
City Unto Itself (a history of
Lynchburg, VA in the 20th century) because he had "accumulated more
information on those subjects than I could do justice to in my newspaper
column."
In 2014, a year after
retiring from the The News & Advance in
Lynchburg, Laurant wrote and published his first novel, The
Kudzu Kid, about an embattled
weekly newspaper editor and a mob-backed hazardous waste dump. Inspiration
Street was released in 2016, just as
he finished his second novel, The Last Supper League.
Laurant's "current
fixation" is a unique, writer-friendly and absolutely free book marketing
blog called "Snowflakes
in a Blizzard" that focuses on
"under the radar" books.
Inspiration
Street focuses on a remarkable and fascinating group of
African-American achievers who lived on a single street in downtown Lynchburg,
VA during the time of segregation.
I had interviewed and written about many of these people and their
descendants in newspaper columns and feature articles over the years, and then
one day a light went off in my head and I realized: "Wow, all of this
happened within two city blocks!" With all due respect to the Rev. Martin
Luther King, who was certainly a great man in many ways, the civil rights
movement existed before him and after him--and several of the people who
lived on Pierce Street made contributions so significant that I subtitled the
book "Two City Blocks That Helped Change America."
What did you learn in writing this book?
Again, I think I underestimated the importance of the people I
focused on in writing Inspiration Street
-- folks like Anne Spencer, Chauncey Spencer, Walter Johnson, Amaza Meredith
and C.W. Seay -- in relation to the world beyond Pierce Street and Lynchburg,
VA. Although this is not a young adult book per se, I think it would be perfect
for teen-aged readers, especially those in inner-city schools.
Did you learn anything
about yourself through writing this book?
What I learned from this project was the value of perseverance and
the possibility of redemption. Almost all of the individuals who are featured
faced daunting obstacles in their youth, not to mention the larger obstacle of
segregation. Poet Anne Spencer grew up with a single mother and then in a
foster home, and didn't start school until she was 11. Walter Johnson was a
high school troublemaker who was then expelled from two colleges before
evolving into an unselfish family physician and the coach of tennis stars
Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson. Amaza Meredith lost her father to suicide on the
eve of her high school graduation, then was turned down by all the college architectural
programs in Virginia because of her race and gender. Frank Trigg was born into
slavery and lost an arm in a farming accident, yet eventually became the
president of two colleges.
One surprising thing I learned was that the land on which Pierce
Street was laid down had previously been used for a Confederate training camp.
That seemed like perfect karma.
What stories in the book are stand-outs?
Here are two: In 1938, Anne Spencer's son Chauncey and fellow aviator Dale White
flew a rickety old single engine plane from Chicago to Washington -- surviving
two crash landings along the way -- in order to bring attention to the absence
of African Americans in the Army Air Corps. By chance, they ran into
then-Senator Harry Truman, who was so impressed by their argument and their
tenacity that he wound up introducing legislation to integrate the entire armed
services.
When famed author and NAACP founder W.E.B. DuBois visited Lynchburg
in the 1920s to speak at a local college, he asked on arrival where he could
take a shower. Presented instead with a wash tub, the fastidious DuBois balked,
then was told that Anne and Edward Spencer on Pierce Street had hot running
water. He knocked on their front door as a complete stranger, took his shower,
and became the previously unknown Anne Spencer's entryway into the ranks of
Harlem Renaissance literary figures.
How did you approach your subject matter?
I've always enjoyed research, so this was actually a lot of fun.
Anne Spencer's granddaughter, Shaun Hester, has a big help, and I had
interviewed Chauncey Spencer several times before his death. The book was
timely, because the tennis court on which Ashe and Gibson learned the fine
points of tennis was being refurbished and opened as part of a Johnson museum.
Other books had been written about several of these individuals (although not
all), and that was also invaluable.
Describe your writing
process.
My method with non-fiction is to create a file in the computer for
each prospective chapter. Then, when I do an interview, I paste quotes and
information into the appropriate chapter.
Is there a message to the book?
I see this as a bridge between black and white, a reminder that
we're really not so different, after all. Indeed, several of the main players
here were the product of inter-racial marriages.
I consider myself as a storyteller, and these are great stories. All
I had to do was reveal them.
Publication
Date: February 26, 2016
