WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE FOR GENERAL NONFICTION From
Pulitzer Prize-winner David Zucchino comes a searing account of the
Wilmington riot and coup of 1898, an extraordinary event unknown to
most Americans. 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 sixty 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 U.S. 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.
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