Race, War, and Remembrance in the Appalachian South

11. A Fugitive Slave in Frontier Appalachia: The Journey of August King on Film

A Fugitive Slave in Frontier Appalachia 242 In Jerry Williamson’s book Hillbillyland, the most comprehensive study so far of Hollywood’s depiction of the mountain South, there is no mention of black people. In Thomas Cripps’s Slow Fade to Black, the most thorough treatment of African Americans on film, there is no mention of Appalachia. Neither exclusion is at all surprising, nor is there any reason to expect such coverage in either case. The two subjects—race relations and Southern Appalachia—did not intersect to any significant degree in popular culture, in literature, or on film,1 until 1996, with the release of a remarkable movie that focuses on the nature of slavery and race relations in a highland setting. The Journey of August King is an exceptional film in several respects . First, it is easily among the most serious and historically accurate depictions of the mountain South ever. Second, aside from assorted sagas of Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett, it is the only film firmly set within antebellum Appalachia. Finally, it is one of the most sensitive and sophisticated portraits of slavery and antislavery sentiment ever produced by Hollywood, and it stands alone as perhaps the only examination of slavery on film that is not placed within a usually generic and stereotypical lowland plantation setting. The credit for these distinctions, of course, lies not with Hollywood producers alone. First and foremost, it is Asheville native John Ehle’s 1971 novel that provides the basis for the film; Ehle himself adapted the book to film.2 An Asheville native,Ehle has had a literary career consisting, in part, of a vast fictional output. Of eleven novels to date, seven are deeply researched reflections on the historical expe11 The Journey of August King on Film 243 A Fugitive Slave in Frontier Appalachia rience of western North Carolina’s settlement and subsequent development . His fiction, which ranges chronologically from the late eighteenth century through the post–World War II era, breaks through regional stereotypes in bold and substantive ways. According to his friend Borden Mace, one of the film’s associate producers, “John has revealed a greater truth and accuracy about Southern Appalachian life than many historians and sociologists,” an assessment with which few critics would take issue.3 This is particularly true of Ehle’s seventh novel, The Journey of August King, simply because he even approached the subject of slavery in a highland setting. The book, which Ehle has translated to the screen with commendable fidelity, confronts in both subtle and not so subtle ways themes that historians have only far more recently tackled in regard to the mountain South.4 It not only explores the ways in which slaveholding, racism, abolitionist sentiment, and class distinctions played out in a highland setting; it also conveys the realities of isolationism and connectedness, of subsistence and market economies in this still formative society early in the nineteenth century. And all of this is reflected through a deceptively simple escape story. While returning home from a semiannual weeklong trip to a bustling market, identified in the book as Old Fort, North Carolina, August King, a recently widowed farmer, discovers in hiding an escaped teenage slave girl named Annalees. After fleeting encounters with her, King reluctantly befriends the starving, footsore, and desperate young woman. Over the course of the next three days of trekking back to his farm in a remote cove community, he conceals her with great difficulty , shunning acquaintances and sacrificing his own newly acquired stock and supplies in order to protect her from her ruthless master and the fearsome search party her owner has hired to find her. In the process, King also falls in love. Though certainly uncharacteristic of commercial Hollywood production values, the love story between King and Annalees remains, as it was in Ehle’s novel, underplayed and ultimately unconsummated. Yet the attraction between these two characters is very real and effectively conveyed by actors Jason Patric and Thandie Newton. (Newton had already scored on-screen as Thomas Jefferson’s Sally Hemings, the most compelling character in the otherwise disappointing 244 Race, War, and Remembrance Merchant–Ivory production Jefferson in Paris.) The love story in August King amounts to a very tentative “brief encounter” that propels the story forward as this white man and this black woman climb higher toward home and freedom, respectively. It is also a...