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Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy
Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy
Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy
Audiobook11 hours

Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

Written by David Zucchino

Narrated by Victor Bevine

4.5/5

()

About this audiobook

By the 1890s, Wilmington was North Carolina’s largest city and a shining example of a mixed-race community. It was a bustling port city with a burgeoning African American middle class and a Fusionist government of Republicans and Populists that included black aldermen, police officers, and magistrates. There were successful black-owned businesses and an African American newspaper, The Record. But across the state—and the South—white supremacist Democrats were working to reverse the advances made by former slaves and their progeny.

In 1898, in response to a speech calling for white men to rise to the defense of Southern womanhood against the supposed threat of black predators, Alexander Manly, the outspoken young Record editor, wrote that some relationships between black men and white women were consensual. His editorial ignited outrage across the South, with calls to lynch Manly.

But North Carolina’s white supremacist Democrats had a different strategy. They were plotting to take back the state legislature in November “by the ballot or bullet or both”, and then use the Manly editorial to trigger a “race riot” to overthrow Wilmington’s multi-racial government. Led by prominent citizens including Josephus Daniels, publisher of the state’s largest newspaper, and former Confederate Colonel Alfred Moore Waddell, white supremacists rolled out a carefully orchestrated campaign that included raucous rallies, race-baiting editorials and newspaper cartoons, and sensational, fabricated news stories.

With intimidation and violence, the Democrats suppressed the black vote and stuffed ballot boxes (or threw them out), to win control of the state legislature on November eighth. Two days later, more than 2,000 heavily armed Red Shirts swarmed through Wilmington, torching the Record office, terrorizing women and children, and shooting at least 60 black men dead in the streets. The rioters forced city officials to resign at gunpoint and replaced them with mob leaders. Prominent blacks—and sympathetic whites—were banished. Hundreds of terrified black families took refuge in surrounding swamps and forests.

This brutal insurrection is a rare instance of a violent overthrow of an elected government in the US. It halted gains made by blacks and restored racism as official government policy, cementing white rule for another half century. It was not a “race riot”, as the events of November 1898 came to be known, but rather a racially motivated rebellion launched by white supremacists.

In Wilmington’s Lie, Pulitzer Prize-winner David Zucchino uses contemporary newspaper accounts, diaries, letters, and official communications to create a gripping and compelling narrative that weaves together individual stories of hate and fear and brutality. This is a dramatic and definitive account of a remarkable but forgotten chapter of American history.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherRecorded Books Audio
Release dateJan 14, 2020
ISBN9781980080251
Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy
Author

David Zucchino

David Zucchino is a foreign correspondentfor the Los Angeles Times. His work has been short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize on three occasions. Thunder Run was published by Atlantic Books in 2004.

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  • 5/5
    Pathetic how much we know about history. I have lived in North Carolina for 35 years and had never heard about this tragedy. The first time I did hear about it, looked for books to read or listen to on the event. I appreciate the History lesson.
  • 5/5
    A great study about how Wilmington, North Carolina becomes the blueprint for how southern whites totally disenfranchise Black voters and assume total political control and dominance over local and state government. Their methods include violence,, intimidation , grandfather clauses, literacy tests and poll taxes. These methods spread all across the South to guarantee white supremacy throughout the South. In 1898 North Carolina had a majority Black population. By 1900 there are no Black office holders in the state. Zucchino sees similar problems for Blacks today with voter restrictions.
  • 5/5
    Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy is a thoroughly researched account of the organized mass murders and the subsequent effects of this illegal, immoral, and pure evil strategy.This book gives as detailed an account as possible of the events of the coup as well as the lies told before, during, and after the murder spree by the whites both in North Carolina and across the country, especially in the south. There will be some who find this to be part of their "southern heritage," and to an extent they are right. Immorality and illegality are indeed among the largest portions of that heritage. There will even be reviewers, as one I have already seen, who misstate or intentionally misunderstands the difference between "being responsible for what my ancestors did" and in making amends for the benefits denied to those murdered (and their descendants) that have been unfairly given to them. If the white supremacists who committed this and the many other crimes, who wrote the bigoted and unconstitutional legislation that denied and/or took away rights and opportunities, had been prosecuted and spent the necessary time in prison and possibly received the death penalty, then today's self-righteous little "it isn't my fault" bigots would not have all of the benefits they now unjustifiably enjoy.This is a difficult book to read for a couple of reasons. First, the events and the inhumanity of those who committed and condoned these actions is appalling. Second, the fact that the basic playbook of the white supremacists of that period is being updated and used today in state legislatures as well as the executive branch of the federal government illustrates the extent to which those who can only achieve success through denying it to others will do whatever they have to do to continue that trend.Make no mistake, any reviewer who claims not to be responsible because it happened so long ago is trying to cover their own pathetic bigotry with such empty logic. They enjoy the fruits of those actions but they want none of the responsibility. That isn't justice, that is immoral inhumanity.I recommend this book to anyone who wants to know the extent to which people will go to maintain power that they cannot maintain through merit. It was true then and, with the election of Trumpenfuehrer, it is true today.Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
  • 5/5
    Wilmington's Lie, by David Zucchino.
    This is an extraordinary chronicle of one of the most shameful episodes in our nation's history. Tremendous research, good writing, a deep dive into the minds of the inhabitants of the tragedy.
    Worth your time. Especially if you are curious about the next coup attempt.
    Step one: intimidate black voters.
    In 1898 it was threats and violence. Now it's a raft of voter restriction laws, abetted by the SCOTUS, plus lessons from the failure of January 6.