Taking the back way home from Wilmington, I drove through the little town of Salemburg-- and that's when I saw the mural: the legendary bass player Willie Weeks, bigger than life.
Month: June 2025
“I Cannot Write My Life”
Mbaye Lo and Carl W. Ernst's new book "I Cannot Write My Life" reveals the Islamic and Arabic literary traditions of West Africa that shaped Omar ibn Said, the Muslim scholar who was enslaved on the North Carolina coast from 1807 until his death in 1863.
The Lake of Hell
The recently discovered slave narrative by John Swanson Jacobs is breathtaking. I do not think I can describe how deeply it touched me, or how profoundly it changed the way that I see some of the places on the North Carolina coast that I have known all my life.
“Darling We Miss Thee”: The Children’s Graves at the Old Smithville Burying Ground
Last summer Laura and I visited the Old Smithville Burying Ground, a lovely old cemetery in Southport, N.C. We walked among the graves of those lost at sea, but they are not the ones I remember now.
A Place Called Oyster Creek
Many years ago, there used to be a little settlement called Oyster Creek down on the north side of the Newport River, not far from my family’s homeplace. My grandmother’s neighbor Beatrice Mason— we called her “Miss Beadie”—told me about it long ago.
David Cecelski 