The historical record frequently is not known to the fullest extent that it can be. This point, combined with difficulty within the United States in having an awareness of the history that continues to exert itself within the social fabric of that country from actors both foreign and domestic, led to my engaging in the nonfiction reporting in the David Zucchino 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).
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.
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 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.
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 – Wednesday, December 8, 2021
Matt Lynn Digital 