ARTS FEATURE ON THE HOMEFRON T
New novel explores an aspect of Charlotte’s forgotten WWII history BY RYAN PITKIN
MEREDITH RITCHIE
Pg. 6 - March 9-22, 2022
PHOTO BY ALI HOGSTON
In 2017, as all three of Meredith Ritchie’s triplets prepared to leave for college, she founder herself in need of a reinvention. “I knew I needed something to transition and to not be a helicopter parent on three different campuses,” she said, laughing. “I knew I wanted to learn something new. I was fairly young. I always said I could create a Meredith 2.0 if I wanted to. And so then it was like, ‘I said that so much, now I’ve got to go do it.’” Focusing on her love for writing and following the advice of local authors she reached out to, Ritchie connected with local nonprofit Charlotte Center for Literary Arts, also known as Charlotte Lit, where she took a year-long Authors Lab class that connected her with local writing coach and author Paula Martinac. From that experience came Poster Girls, Ritchie’s
debut novel that follows the stories of two women living and working in Charlotte during World War II. The book delves into a largely forgotten part of Charlotte’s history: Ritchie’s two protagonists — Kora, a Black woman from Mississippi; and Maggie, a white woman from Boston — take jobs at the Shell Assembly Plant, a massive naval munitions assembly factory that employed one in 10 Charlotteans during the WWII. In 1942, it took less than six months for the U.S. Rubber Company and U.S. Navy to carve out over 2,300 acres near Steele Creek, erect 250 buildings, and employ up to 10,000 employees for Charlotte’s Shell Plant, with women and people of color filling the vast majority of positions to help fill the void left by men at war. Upon the release of Poster Girls, I sat with Ritchie at Giddy Goat Coffee Roasters in the Plaza Midwood neighborhood to discuss how her own personal journey led her back in time to the 1940s and to this story, among other things. Queen City Nerve: How did you decide on this time period? Why WWII? Meredith Ritchie: I was in a job transition in 2017, and it was actually before the whole Me Too thing hit, but I just asked myself a question: “How do women lead? What is the unique way that women lead?” And I really couldn’t answer that question because the people I had reported to and dealt with that were women usually got where they were because they led like men. So I was like, “Well, how are we going to figure out when they’re always there? … Oh, wait, there was a time when they
weren’t there.” That was World War II. And I had just been to Camp North End, and I thought for sure, “Oh, that was probably something really cool in World War II.” It was not. Was it not a bomb-making facility? In the ’50s it was. Those were the Nike bombs. They shipped out supplies in WWII, totally boring, not the right setting, but in Googling that, the Shell Plant came up. I never knew about the Shell Plant. For twoand-a-half years it was this huge deal in Charlotte, and nobody knew about it. I was born here and I’ve lived here most of my life and I didn’t know about this. What a cool setting to do this and to tell about the forgotten history of Charlotte. So that became my setting, and I did a bunch of research on it down at the Carolina Room at the [Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Main branch]. There was a guy in Steele Creek [named Walter Neely] that helped a lot, because that’s where [the Shell Plant] was. Are the buildings still there? The only building left, according to Walter Neely, who has written all this stuff on the history, is a Mexican restaurant on Westinghouse [Boulevard] called La Poblanita. So that is the only building that’s still standing. Ironically, it was the main cafeteria. It’s the one that burned down and they built it back. How did you decide to explore the racial aspects of it, especially in that time period? You said in a press release that it mirrored your own personal journey, so tell me about what that journey was. When Black Lives Matter happened, I started to Google, and that was my primary research. I didn’t know that much about Brooklyn in Charlotte, so I learned and kind of fell in love with Brooklyn, which had 1,400 homes and 250 businesses. I had no idea that it was that big. There are some great descriptions you write depicting everyday life in places like the Cherry and Brooklyn neighborhoods. I
couldn’t help but be reminded of the Levine Museum’s City Within a City exhibit about Brooklyn. Did you do any of your research through Levine? Levine was a big help. [Levine staff historian] Dr. Willie Griffin was a big help. He gave me some great book choices to read; one is called The Queen City at War [by Stephen Drew]. It’s fabulous. I didn’t know anything about Roosevelt’s executive order in 1941 — no. 8802, which he wrote — that said there’s no racial discrimination allowed in the defense industry. I love the movie Hidden Figures, and that was the same executive order that allowed those women to work in the defense industry. And so basically The Queen City at War told me that there was no wage discrimination allowed, so they were all paid the same. A lot of the African Americans were coming from making $3 a week, and now making $25-$30 a week … This is a game changer. I just always knew that Kora wanted to buy a house, and I also wanted the reader to understand on their own — especially the white readers — to empathize with Kora and know that this is what she wanted and also know the history afterwards [of urban renewal that led to the destruction of Brooklyn] and put two and two together, and to understand it wasn’t right. It’s interesting you say that because there are certain themes that I noticed that run through the book, and one of them, for lack of a better term, could be described as white guilt. Sometimes it even takes a very literal form, as Maggie is the reason behind Kora getting fired early in the book and feels the need to remedy that situation. Was that something you were conscious of while you were writing? Well, yeah, I think, and that evolved over the whole Black Lives Matter movement, too. I really dove in, I was reading books and really trying to educate myself, and not just for the book but to be a better community neighbor. I learned the term white savior, and I definitely tried to stay away from that. It wasn’t Kora that
