This context matters because it shapes what the article was trying to do.

It was not primarily a historical investigation of whether the 1915 events had actually occurred as reported.

It was a feature story, triggered by a specific news event, drawing on local color and community memory to flesh out an ironic human interest narrative.

The reporter who traveled to Blackville was not a fact-checker; he was a storyteller looking for the most vivid version of a story that local people seemed to agree had happened.

Dr.