Set in a small town in Upstate New York in 1936 (the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War), The Civilities introduces Blessah Hart, a dynamic young Black graduate student of History and Anthropology at Cornell University, and M. Silas Jackson, an elderly white poet and Confederate army veteran who has resided in the North for 60 years. Conducting research for her graduate thesis on the narratives of surviving Confederates living in the North, Blessah reaches out to “son of the South” poet Jackson, whose poetry critiques and romanticizes the Old South, and is rich with allusions about the nation’s history and enigmatic clues about the poet’s own past. As researcher and subject, Blessah and Silas form an unlikely connection. But their relationship is tested as Blessah’s perceptive nature leads her to “read between the lines” of Silas’s work, prompting questions that strain his patience.

When Blessah travels to Silas’s hometown in the South to uncover the missing pieces of his story, neither historian nor poet is prepared for the agonizing revelation her research uncovers: a discovery linking them to a history of bondage, birthright, bloodshed, compelling a reckoning with the wounds of the past and the wrongs of the present. From the author of Possessing Harriet and Toliver & Wakeman, The Civilities explores profound questions about heritage, race, civility, and the tension between history and literature as two means of conveying truth.

This production is made possible by a 2024 Support for Artists grant awarded by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.