About This Project

This project, under the direction of Mollie Godfrey and Brooks Hefner, would not have been possible had it not been for the deep care shown by George Newman’s descendants in preserving his papers within the family for the sixty years since his passing, and for Ruth Toliver’s decision in 2021 that it was time to share her grandfather’s writing with the world. We are deeply grateful to Ruth and her family for trusting us with this project, and for working with us so closely each step of the way. We are also grateful to Karen Thomas, Sarah Brooks, Susan Zurbrigg, and the Board of the Dallard-Newman House for supporting this effort and collaborating with us on the public symposium celebrating the novel’s publication; to Monica Robinson, Director of the Shenandoah Valley Black Heritage Project and the Newtown Cemetery Trustees for collaborating with us on this effort; and to the Lucy F. Simms Continuing Education Center for hosting the symposium.

Thank you also to our coeditors, Jeslyn Pool and Evan Sizemore, who joined the project as graduate students and spent many hours over the summer deciphering Newman’s handwriting, mapping characters and locations in the novel, and supporting our efforts to date the manuscript. Thank you to Richard Yarborough, who took the time to read Newman’s manuscript and consulted with us over email at an early stage of the project, and to our contributing scholars—Veronica T. Watson, Mark Metzler Sawin, and Leonard Richards Jr.—who agreed to take on the heavy load of helping us contextualize this previously unknown novel for contemporary readers.

This project is also indebted to all the people in JMU Special Collections—Kate Morris, Tiffany Cole, and Bodeene Amyot Cairdeas—who worked with the Toliver family with such care and went above and beyond in digitizing Newman’s papers to ensure they would be widely accessible to the public.