(The writing career of Carson McCullers, shown here, saw its first success with the publishing of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter on June 4, 1940).
The central protagonist of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is John Singer, a deaf man living in a mill town of 1930s Georgia, a state in the southern region of the United States. Singer is left lonely when his Greek companion, a mute named Spiros Antonapoulos, is committed to a psychiatric hospital as insane. Singer becomes the glue for the community of disaffected misfits who confide their feelings to him with no understanding of his, John Singer’s, inner world.
(Alternate book covers for The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers).
The remaining story focuses largely on the confidences placed into Singer, as quoted here, by “Mick Kelly, a tomboy who loves music and dreams of buying a piano; Jake Blount, an alcoholic labor agitator; Biff Brannon, the observant owner of a diner; and Dr. Benedict Mady Copeland, an idealistic physician.” In the absence of spoken feedback from Singer, who communicated through sign language with Antonapoulos, each of Singer’s acquaintances assume that Singer emotionally sympathizes with their particular demographic. It was in this revelation that we as readers get to know the characters without addressing the pursuit of loved understanding that each of the characters’ needs. This comes to a head for the novel, and for Singer, when Antonapoulos suffers a fate that devastates Singer more than an insanity diagnosis.
(The title for the book The Heart is a Lonely Hunter came from the poem The Lonely Hunter by the Scottish poet William Sharp. Pictured here is Carson McCullers, the writer of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter).
The experience of the Carson McCullers book The Heart is a Lonely Hunter earns 4.0-stars on a scale of one-to-five stars for its heart, its unique narrative structure of using a mute as the protagonist, and the semi-autobiographical nature of the character Mick Kelly.
(From left, Supreme Court Justice and NAACP leader Thurgood Marshall and US PresidentLyndon Baines Johnson).
The five-day hearing of the U.S. Senate that confirmed Thurgood Marshall, of New York, the first African-AmericanSupreme Court justice on July 13th, 14th, 18th, 19th and 24th, 1967 are the central timeline that Wil Haygood uses to share Marshall‘s biography. At state in Marshall‘s life story were the stakes of the American civil rights movement of the era, with Justice Marshall‘s career, preceding legal practice and social activity geared at moving the dial forward. Marshall led the legal case that legally struck down the separate-but-equal doctrine, which led to school integration (Brown v. Board of Education overturning Plessy v. Ferguson). Haygood documented scores of legal defenses for the underrepresented and unfairly attacked. These points and more established Marshall‘s candidacy for the supreme court. The establishing of that background, and the tactics used against him through the Supreme Court hearing, have been replicated in the Senate since.
(The book Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination that Changed America by writer Wil Haygood was published September 15, 2015).
The Marshall nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in September 1961 by U.S. PresidentJohn F. Kennedy by southernUS senators for many months. James O. Eastland of Mississippi, a noted southern US senator with a similar motivation through the Supreme Court nomination, aimed to stack the deck. The tactics of Strom Thurmond of South Carolina was given notable attention through this biography as well.
(This image of Wil Haygood shows the biographer alongside the original cover for his book Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination that Changed America).
There is much to recommend the story of this book from an educational and entertainment perspective. There are life lessons and philosophical approaches to life and intellect that offer insight, along with the underlying drama and contributing actions of two separate presidents in aiming to successfully nominate a qualified jurist. The history lessons in the subject matter, the tactics and the humanity of the Thurgood Marshall path to the Supreme Court helps me grant Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination that Changed America as written by Wil Haygood 4.5-stars on a scale of one-to-five stars.
While I see disagreement among the sources that define such things, the earliest release date that I’ve found for the most commercially successful Dr. John album was February 25th, 1973. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, Dr. John, also known as Mac Rebennack, helped define the New Orleans R&B scene with a Piano Blues and Funk sound that had arguably its best expression for Rebennack with the album In the Right Place.
(Presented here is the album cover for the In the Right Place album by Dr. John).
Right Place, Wrong Time charted ninth in the United States, as confirmed here. As confirmed with that same Songfacts listing, the song was “a pivotal track that marries the legacy of the good doctor’s New Orleans rhythm-and-blues ancestors to the bold funk that dominated black American music at the time of the record’s release.”
(The song Right Place, Wrong Time became Dr. John‘s biggest hit single, having been released as the first single from his sixth album, In the Right Place).
Opening with an interesting instrumental beginning, Same Old Same Old tells the story of hard times making ends meet. The will to work seems to be elusive, with the heaviness of life weighing the man down emotionally and physically.
Just the Same opens with a downcast blues of the piano and organ forecasting the mood of love at risk. The song serves as a statement of sustaining romantic love against the counterpoint of a partner having her doubts. “Right or wrong my love is strong,” sings Dr. John, in making his case.
An upbeat piano riff opens Qualified, a song of the commonfolk arguing for the substance of one man’s approach to life compared to another. The argument is about the flash of money and style not making the man while sticking up for himself and everyone in his circle.
Traveling Mood presents an upbeat mood to the setback of getting one’s romantic love interest back after she’s moved out while the singer, Dr. John, slept. The determination to win her affection back takes him to seven different states in the southern United States to make the world right again.
Peace Brother Peace brings horns to play the metaphorical hymn of love while letting people live their lives. The soulful presentation is rather catchy for those looking to tap their feet.
(Dr. John is a rhythm and blues artist from New Orleans, Louisiana).
The message of life being hard and mean marks the message of the song of Life. Seeking empathy for the difficulties of feeling beaten down, sore and tired bears a resemblance to the song Iko Iko that preceded this song on the Dr. John album Dr. John’s Gumbo.
Such a Night stands out among the songs on In The Right Place, first, for commencing with lyrics right from the beginning of the song. The premise for the song is stealing the affections of a girl Dr. John fancies that, unfortunately for all, is with good friend Jim. The intention to win the lady’s affections, for if he doesn’t someone else will, genuinely made me laugh the first time I heard it.
Fusing funk with an organ sensibility, Shoo Fly Marches On musically captured my imagination from the initial listening. The feeling I take is one of freedom with the chin held high and the determination to make anything happen simply on the power of will.
I Been Hoodood blends keyboards and organ with a percussion baseline. Lyrically the song gets into being outdoors and on the run for religious practices that seemingly have gone wrong.
Cold Cold Cold tells the story of a romantic love that ended badly. The song is as mainstream as Right Place, Wrong Time, offering the bridge repetitions common to a more pop/rock sound. The way that Dr. John feels by the turn of events in how he learned of his romantic love interest entertaining the company of other gentlemen tells the story of this song well.
(Wild Night by Van Morrison was released in support of the Tupelo Honey album in September of 1971).
(Straight to Your Heart) Like a Cannonball takes a less serious look at how life’s loose ends can make accomplishing your goals difficult. The musicality and ease of the song’s tone bely the song title, which feels deliberately silly with a side of endearing.
((Straight to Your Heart) Like a Cannonball was the third song released in support of the Van Morrison album Tupelo Honey).
The piano opening for Old Old Woodstock catches my heart every time that I hear it. The feeling is one of a father that travels a bit too much, not unlike a musician might. The gladness of this song is coming home to the familiar feelings of place, home and the love of family. The sense of fatherhood is clear from the lyrics as well.
Starting a New Life feels intimate, like a band offering that you might get from a local group of musicians aiming to make their name after practicing in their basement and playing Saturday night’s at weddings or bars. The sound is for the pure love of the result, which is part of the charm that draws me to this song that invokes a sense of spring.
You’re My Woman is a clear love song Van Morrison wrote to his wife. Slow in tempo and sung in a soulful yet sincere voice, the song gives very clear thanks while inviting romantic interludes as well.
(The song Tupelo Honey was released as a single in support of the 1972 album of the same name by Van Morrison).
Tupelo Honey continues with an exceptionally clear tone of love tempered like a hymn by the organ accompaniment that begins and persists through the song. Charting 47th in the United States, as mentioned here, some additional context for the song’s central metaphor is in order. “Tupelo honey is honey made from the sweet flowers of the tupelo tree, which grows abundantly in swampy areas of the Southern United States,” as mentioned by Songfacts. The sincere and sustained passion of this song with top notch musical production makes this my favorite song on the album.
A sensibility that shares something with Americancountry music greets you with the song I Wanna Roo You. The subtext of the song is not subtle in communicating what I take to be Morrison‘s desire for passionate undressed expression with his wife.
When That Evening Sun Goes Down dials back the lust of I Wanna Roo You. While sticking with a playful country beat, the song is a love song Morrison sings to his wife. The touching devotion of this song calls upon spending the day in support of the family with a desire to emotionally connect with his wife afterward.
(Moonshine Whiskey is the concluding track of the 1971 Van Morrison album Tupelo Honey).
Moonshine Whiskey is an interesting approach to music making for this album that charms me more than I logically think it should. Lyrically, the song invokes the lyrical qualities of Tupelo Honey, the song, while granting a distinct sense of Texas country through multiple changes in the direction of the song. That the song almost offers a tour of the album with scores of instruments, harmonies and expressions of what’s called southern love simply works. A truly unique and charming effect ends the Tupelo Honey album with more oomph and uplift that I was expecting.
(Additional covers for A Death in the Family, which was first published in 1957).
The story of A Death in the Family is a work of autobiographical fiction, as confirmed here. The core perspective the readers receive is that of Rufus Follet, a six-year-old boy. Further perspectives explored include those of Rufus’ mother, his younger sister, Catherine, and a few others.
(James Agee of Knoxville, Tennessee wrote A Death in the Family).
The heart of the story is at first the introduction of Rufus’ atheist father’s role in the family, followed in succession by rumblings of that father’s death, and finally the familial and societal turmoil that follows among the boy’s religious mother, her alcoholic brother-in-law and members of the extended family as well as society.
(Still other covers for A Death in the Family, whose text was edited for publishing by David McDowell after James Agee‘s death).
Besides the notion of looking into differing religious views, A Death in the Familyalso looked at “differences between black and white, rich and poor, country life and city life, and, ultimately, life and death”. The author’s approach of linking past and present offered an interesting look into sadness from multiple viewpoints, with the innocence of a child offering an interesting means of sharing the writer’s, James Agee‘s, viewpoints.
The book feels like historical fiction written from a southern perspective of the United States. There is depth that allows the reader to engage with the subject matter while ultimately confronting their own thoughts over the perspectives explored. Given that a discomfort, loss and strong feelings were at the core of this novel, I grant A Death in the Family by James Agee 4-stars on a scale of 1-to-5.
Historical fiction from the end of the nineteenth century brings us to a book by Kate Chopin of St. Louis, Missouri and later New Orleans, Louisiana. First published in 1899, The Awakening offers a bold look for the time of what fidelity, adultery and the demands of society say about duties to self, children and marriage from the female perspective. There was controversy about The Awakening as a book, with the quote from a contemporary of Chopin‘s saying this: “Willa Cather, who would become a well known twentieth-century American author, labeled it trite and sordid.” This review includes some spoilers; skip to the last paragraph to receive my rating of the book.
(Alternative covers of the 1899 Kate Chopin novel The Awakening).
The Awakening is set in New Orleans and along the Louisiana coast with the Gulf of Mexico. Set in the same era of the book’s publishing, the book predates the realism of novelists including Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner while echoing such contemporary writers as Edith Wharton and Henry James.
(Kate Chopin is an American author, whose The Awakening was published in 1899).
The novel itself first sets the stage by introducing businessman Léonce Pontellier, his wife Edna, and their two kids Etienne and Raoul vacationing with the management and support of Madame Lebrun and her two sons, Robert and Victor. Edna spends much of the vacation with her friend Adèle Ratignolle, who helps to establish a central conflict for the story by pointing Edna to her responsibilities as a wife and mother.
(Additional covers to the 1899 Kate Chopin novel The Awakening).
Robert Lebrun, the son of the woman helping watch the Pontellier children, seeks and earns the affection of Mrs. Edna Pontellier. Robert sense problems with a romantic relationship developing from his affection, so contrives a business venture in Mexico to avoid the impropriety of a relationship with Edna. The feelings this brings for Edna become a focus for the novel.
(The message of works like 1899’s The Awakening made American writer Kate Chopin controversial in some circles).
With Edna reassessing her place in the world following the vacation, publicly observed changes in the traditional roles of a mother of a businessman husband in society lead to an insidious yet societal norm of the period of Léonce Pontellier approaching his physician with questions about his wife’s mental health. Things develop from this place to include a business trip to New York City, New York for Léonce, explicit further behavior for the marriage partners in isolation, and what society truly owes women in the United States and the American South of this period. The story culmination to these questions addresses themselves either through Robert Lebrun or Léonce Pontellier for Edna; my point in not sharing specifically reflects my suggestion that you read the book.
(Even more covers to the 1899 Kate Chopin novel The Awakening).
The Awakening offers mature themes on the subject of marriage. The book prompts readers to confront their feelings about the subject matter, specifically about where to set relationship boundaries. Doing this in the safety of a book where dialogue can exist feels like a strength for the book. This leads me to give The Awakening by Kate Chopin 4.5-stars on a scale of 1-to-5.
There is much remarkable about the man who, but for the prominent general and first president of the United States, George Washington, might be remembered today as the first among “the most prominent statesmen of America’s Revolutionary generation,” which is a definition for Founding Father offered by the Encyclopædia Britannica. The two-episode documentary series offers much in terms of placing Franklin in context regarding who he was, how he went about making his mark in the world, and some contextual thinking around what Franklin can mean to American culture in today’s world.
(An image of Benjamin Franklin as a typesetter and printer from the Ken Burns documentary Benjamin Franklin).
Franklin was the youngest of Josiah Franklin and Abiah Folger Franklin. Josiah Franklin had seven children with his first wife and ten with Benjamin‘s mother, making for an upbringing that lacked a significant quantity of formal education. Raised Presbyterian with his father a soap and candle maker, we learned in Join or Die (1706-1774) that Benjamin was eventually apprenticed to his brother James Franklin, who had returned from a trip to England at age 24 with a printing press. That Josiah mediated the relationship between James and Benjamin, often to the just advantage of the talented and younger Benjamin.
(The New-England Courant was published by Benjamin Franklin‘s older brother, James. The younger Franklin was an apprentice in the print works of his elder brother).
The New-England Courant newspaper was founded in 1721 by James Franklin. Benjamin Franklin would learn the newspaper trade from this independent newspaper, inventing Silence Dogood as “a fictitious character, the widow of a country minister, “an Enemy to Vice, and a Friend to Virtue”. She abhorred arbitrary government and unlimited power,” as noted here as well as in the documentary. The newspaper eventually gave way in part owing to the religious sensibilities of Boston at the time, in addition to the liberal viewpoint of the newspaper. The lessons taken from the larger experience would serve the younger Franklin in a lifetime of business and political leadership that would follow. From the human perspective, that Benjamin would own slaves, trade in slavery using the newspaper as a vehicle, and benefitted from a lack societal integration in race while financially gaining from slavery were raised; slavery in the United States was not a strictly southern agricultural notion.
(Ken Burns directed the 2022 documentary titled Benjamin Franklin).
The documentary recounted the end of the apprenticeship between James and Benjamin, with adventures specifically in Philadelphia with the meeting of his future wife, Deborah Read Franklin. The first meeting of Deborah and then seventeen-year-old Benjamin was recounted to comedic effect in Benjamin Franklin‘s Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Read Franklin “watched the tall, husky youth pass her father’s shop on Philadelphia’s Market Street, chomping on a roll of bread. His pockets bulged with extra pairs of socks, and he carried two more rolls, one under each arm. As she watched, Deborah giggled out loud.” That Read Franklin ran the family businesses freed her husband to pursue local and national politics for decades before and after the American Revolution.
(From left, narrator Peter Coyote, Mandy Patinkin as the voice of Benjamin Franklin, and Josh Lucas as the voice of William Franklin in the Ken Burns documentary Benjamin Franklin).
The relationship between American revolutionary Benjamin Franklin and his illegitimate son William Franklin, was complicated. William would become a Royal Governor of New Jersey, actively working to circumvent diplomatic efforts of his father in favor of colonial independence. The circumstances of the coldness and break between father and son were largely shared during the An American (1775-1790) documentary episode. William‘s imprisonment in Connecticut came during the revolutionary war, with the wife of Benjamin‘s son, William, dying while William was in prison. “William Franklin and Benjamin Franklin never reconciled their differences,” as noted here as well as in the documentary. How future presidentJohn Adams and Benjamin Franklin were in conflict regarding ambassadorial approaches to France during the revolutionary period of American history was addressed interestingly in the Burns documentary.
(From left, Paul Giamatti as the voice of John Adams and Liam Neeson as the voice of House of Commons member Alexander Wedderburn, a bitter opponent of Benjamin Franklin, in the Ken Burns documentary Benjamin Franklin).
I have been particularly interested in Benjamin Franklin as a subject of study for at least a couple of decades. I found that the documentary offers insights into the man and his role in the formation of what is the United States. That information I had encountered previously was revisited in this documentary did not feel distracting. Many subjects and themes within this film were not specifically mentioned within this review. I grant the documentary Benjamin Franklin as directed by Ken Burns 4-stars on a scale of 1-to-5.
(Alternative covers for John Kennedy Toole‘s Pulitzer Prize winning book A Confederacy of Dunces).
The title for A Confederacy of Dunces comes from a Jonathan Swift essay titled Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting, wherein recognition of a genius can be noted when “the dunces are all in confederacy against him.” Toole‘s book frames the book’s protagonist, a well-educated yet indolent 30-year-old man that lives at home with his mother, as that genius. Ignatius J. Reilly encounters several interesting and well-drawn characters in the French Quarter of New Orleans of the early 1960’s while looking rather unsuccessfully for work.
(After his death, John Kennedy Toole won the Pulitzer Prize for his book A Confederacy of Dunces).
Ignatius J. Reilly lives with his mother, Irene Reilly, through the majority of A Confederacy of Dunces. The younger Reilly’s fixed affirmations for theology and geometry lead him into a belligerence towards Irene and most people around him, as expressed interpersonally many times through the book. An early display of this comes when police officer Angelo Mancuso demands that Ignatius produce identification while he waits for his mother to return from a doctor’s visit for her arthritis.
(Thelma Toole, the mother of John Kennedy Toole, helped to get A Confederacy of Dunces published in 1980).
The scene comedically resolves itself with undignified accusations about the city and law enforcement. As Irene and Ignatius use the confusion to make their escape into a bar. As a result of the excessive drinking that follows, the boy and his mother incur a debt brought on by crashing their Plymouth. This provides the avenue for really allowing the full expression of Ignatius J. Reilly to be shown in his adoration for early Medieval philosopher Boethius, among other eccentricities set in opposition to the popular culture of the time.
(Writer Walker Percy helped to get A Confederacy of Dunces published in 1980. Percy had been approached a persistent Thelma Toole before taking a serious look at John Kennedy Toole‘s work).
Ignatius’ enjoyment of eating coupled with eventually landing work as a hot dog vendor lends itself to explicit humor at odds with much of the upstanding ideals that the large gentleman aims to use as mechanisms of self-defense. In addition to more than a dozen characters that interact with Ignatius, his largely written relationship with Jewishbeatnik Myrna Minkoff of New York City, New York proves important to anchoring Ignatius J. Reilly to a reality that, through much of the remainder of the novel, can be comedically fleeting and delusional at times.
(After his death, John Kennedy Toole‘s book A Confederacy of Dunces was published with the assistance of Thelma Toole and Walker Percy).
I have seen A Confederacy of Dunces appear on multiple lists of works of the South in the United States. This, coupled with its recognition by the organization adjudicating books for the Pulitzer Prize, convinced me to have a look. That I found this citation of A Confederacy of Dunces “as probably the perfect New Orleans book” also helped. The book lent itself to an appealing, if sometimes maddening, exploration of the imagination when sticking with some of the ways the social mistakes wound up correcting themselves in the end. I suppose that is where the charm for the book rests. I grant A Confederacy of Dunces as written by John Kennedy Toole 3.75-stars on a scale of 1-to-5 for its quality.
It is with a touch of historical fiction based in the notion of orphanages, abortion and the personal lives of people behaving poorly that John Irving offers the book The Cider House Rules. The book was published in 1985, after abortion was legalized in the United States. The book looks back to a time before legalization was made the law of the land.
(John Irving wrote The Cider House Rules, which was released on May 10th, 1985).
The man narrative of The Cider House Rules begins in an orphanage that adopted the name St. Cloud’s in the northeast United States region, in Maine. We get to know Dr. Wilbur Larch, who runs the orphanage after some personally unpleasant experiences after World War Two with a prostitute and the prostitute‘s daughter. Larch decided to offer the practice of delivering orphans or offering abortions at St. Cloud’s. The history of how Larch came to this practice, and kept an emotional distance from orphans to ease the transition to adoption, was the early story of the novel.
(Four alternative book covers to The Cider House Rules by John Irving).
The story transitions from this to the way Dr. Wilbur Larch, primarily Homer Wells, in subplot Melony and the staff of nurses at St. Cloud’s would grow up to not be adopted and gained prominence among the staff at St. Cloud’s. The time spent offering the back story of this group, along with the education of Homer in obstetrics and abortion, to be useful, was at times tedious. The story of The Cider House Rules gained legs for me when this laying of the land for the coming-of-age stories for Homer and Melony gave way to their leaving the orphanage.
(The Cider House Rules by John Irving has had multiple reprintings since being released on May 10th, 1985).
The stories of Homer and Melony led to South Carolina, which is where the notion of their being rules for a cider house came into play. This mixing in of Southern United States offered insight into people working at an apple grove, along with Homer and Melony starting families, such as that goes. The stories of Candy Kendall and Wally Worthington, and the Ocean View Orchards in Maine, offers interpersonal intrigue when Wally’s plane is shot down in Burma (also known as Myanmar) during World War Two. Homer’s fathering Angel with Candy, who had a preexisting relationship with Wally, offers intrigue when Wally comes back from the war.
(Another four alternative book covers to The Cider House Rules by John Irving).
Years later, as Angel is old enough to love, further intrigue arises between Angel and Rose Rose to boot. Rose has the same first and last name, and some personal secrets involving her father that Rose aims to keep from Angel and Homer. Melony resurfaces in Homer’s life about the time of the revelation of the Rose and Angel storyline, as well as with the considerations back at St. Cloud’s for how the orphanage will continue when the aging staff of the orphanage cannot continue. The personal intrigue among the characters, and how things will work themselves out in the various strings of narrative, is the emotional part that works best for The Cider House Rules.
(The Cider House Rules by John Irving has sold well since being released on May 10th, 1985).
While the beginning narrative for The Cider House Rules moved a bit slowly for me, the story did come together to offer a story with depth, compassion and stories that I will retain well beyond this reading. Given the depth and complexities of conscience and feeling involved that also allowed me to care for characters on differing levels, I grant The Cider House Rules by John Irving 3.75-stars on a scale of 1-to-5.
(David Zucchino wrote the 2021 Pulitzer Prize winning book Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy).
The Wilmington Coup and Massacre of 1898 occurred in a fashion wherein the “the multiracial … city government of Wilmington, North Carolina, was violently overthrown on November 10, 1898, and as many as 60 Black Americans were killed in a premeditated murder spree that was the culmination of an organized months-long statewide campaign by white supremacists to eliminate African American participation in government and permanently disenfranchise Black citizens of North Carolina” (Encyclopedia Britannica).
(This historical marker in remembrance of the Wilmington Coup and Massacre of 1898 was installed in Wilmington, North Carolina to remember the violence and government overthrow committed in the name of skin color).
In the months leading up to the election of November 1898 in North Carolina, virulent hatred was stirred between predominantly white and black populations. The gains of African Americans in the south with Reconstruction following the American Civil War was not met well with those that lost political, economic and social control following the war. Social stereotypes were used to instigate angry or bitter disagreement spurred in part through “virulent racist propaganda” (Encyclopedia Britannica) perpetuated in large measure by newspapers in Raleigh, Charlotte and Wilmington. The notion was “to eliminate forever, by ballot or bullet, voting and office-holding by Blacks” (Encyclopedia Britannica) in North Carolina. The means of this were spelled out in Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy.
(Editor Alex Manley‘s Daily Record office was burned in the Wilmington Coup and Massacre of 1898).
The black-owned newspaper The Daily Record in Wilmington was a specific target of the coup and massacre in the build-up and conduct of the rioting that occurred as part of the coup. Alex Manly editorialized for The Daily Record. “In an editorial published August 18, 1898, Manly challenged interracial sexual stereotypes, condemning white men for taking advantage of black women. His assertion that it was no worse for a white woman to be sexually involved with a black man than a black woman to be sexually involved with a white man infuriated conservative local Democrats, who were able to capitalize on white fears of interracial intimacy at the ballot box” (Blackpast.org). This debate fanned negative sentiment against the multi-culturalism across North Carolina and the American south, in addition to putting Manly‘s life at risk.
(The Daily Record newspaper was burned in the Wilmington Coup and Massacre of 1898. This image is used on the cover of David Zucchino‘s 2020 book Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy).
The book itself tells the story of the above with an engaging degree of detail, intrigue, and depth. The information shared goes well beyond the notion of dates and names into identifying motivations, methods and precisely who had something to gain, to lose, and circumstances of both. I was stricken by the use of the media to fan popular opinion against reason, fairness and self-interest with such intensity. The power of group thinking overrode interpersonal motivation and the tendency towards stewardship for many. This is a clear story that David Zucchino captures with Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy.
(David Zucchino wrote Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy, which was released in January 2020).
There are many books on the relationships among groups in the United States that you can aim to learn from. It is my feeling that you can do worse than Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy by David Zucchino; I grant the book 4-stars on a scale of 1-to-5.
Matt Lynn Digital 