Forged in Fire - The Story of Apex

The Apex story begins a century before the town was born, when farmers, cowboys, and preachers, Free Persons of Color, enslaved Africans, and indigenous Tuscarora struggled just to get along. It continues through the economic boom of the early twentieth century and the devastation of “The Great Fire” of 1911. The story concludes with the town’s amazing rebirth, when resilient citizens used “pluck, perseverance, and paint” (and brick!) to build back better than ever.

The play is narrated by two of historic Apex’s leading ladies: Mary Baldwin, who built schools and churches in Apex and whose sons built a Black Wall Street in Martinsville, Virginia; and Julia Montgomery Street, who became one of America’s most beloved authors of children’s fiction.

The play is based on Warren and Toby Holleman’s award-winning book, Pluck, Perseverance, and Paint: Apex, North Carolina: Beginnings to 1941. Byron Pitts, co-anchor of ABC Nightline, praised the book as “a must-read story about community and the can-do spirit of small-town America. This is a triumphant American story.”