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    Wilmington's Lie (WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE): The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy
    Unavailable
    Wilmington's Lie (WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE): The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy
    Unavailable
    Wilmington's Lie (WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE): The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy
    Ebook586 pages9 hours

    Wilmington's Lie (WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE): The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

    By David Zucchino

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtlantic Monthly Press
    Release dateJan 7, 2020
    ISBN9780802146489
    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.

    Read more from David Zucchino

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    Reviews for Wilmington's Lie (WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE)

    4.5/5

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    • 5/5
      Beautifully written,a shocking narrative of history that carries forward today. Sadly, we never learn,or care to learn, how our racial divide has always fueled our National, State and local politics and politicians. Will November 10, 2098 be any different in how we, “whites” treat and respect others of color?
    • 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.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 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.
    • 4/5
      Apparently this is what you get when a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper journalist tries to write history. You get excellent history. Early into my reading of this book, it was very easy to compare it to the best histories I've read of American Civil War battles, such as, Gettysburg, Antietam, and Shiloh. True, this wasn't about the Civil War -- it's from 33 years later -- but forces at work are very much derived from that war. Factors leading up to the event are well laid out. Key personalities are well drawn. The main event is reported in detail. The aftermath is followed out many years. But it should be pointed out that even if a reader already knew the basic elements of the Wilmington, North Carolina, event of 1896, and decided to forego the meticulous detail but compelling narrative the author provides, the Epilogue itself is worth the price of admission, in my opinion. The connections from the Civil War to 1896, and then from that time to today is stunningly clear without the author ever making a specific point about it. Somewhat amazingly, it was the day I finished reading this book that news came out about present day events in the same North Carolina city that could have just as easily been quoted in this book. Then again, maybe it's not amazing, but incredibly sad and disturbing.
    • 4/5
      Excellent book about a little known massacre in North Carolina's history. In 1898, a group of white politicians organized a state-wide method to take back their state from Republican and black rule. In a cold blooded conspiracy of white supremacy, they attacked the black and Republican community in Wilmington, North Carolina, and murdered perhaps 60 black men, and banished even more black and white leaders so they could cement their control. Using infantry and naval units back from the Spanish-American war, black leaders were hunted down and either killed, chased away or banished from the town. Others were shot down by gleeful white "Red Shirts", KKK and drunken thugs who were told this was a riot by blacks who wanted to take over the town.The end result was that innocent men were murdered in broad daylight, with no accounting of either the numbers of men killed or accountability for the white murderers. The attacks were coordinated along the east coast of North Carolina, so even fleeing blacks on the trains were met at each stop by white masked thugs who either denied them getting off the trains, or took them off for rough treatment or death.Afterwards, the whites left extensive written and printed accounts of their deeds and intentions, but the blacks did not. David Zucchino, a Pulitzer Prize winner, did an excellent job of digging out what could be reconstructed from the viewpoints of the blacks who were attacked or fled or were burned out.This is a horrible story that is not well known. What is particularly frightening about it is the political schemes to deny blacks the vote, or to hold office, or to register, are still being applied in North Carolina state politics. Many of the ideas and techniques for intimidation and denial were copied from and by other states, to shape the Southern politics of the turn of the century to the 1960s.For generations, white families felt justified in killing the blacks that they saw as murderous rioters and people who wanted control over white men and women. Instead, this is a cold blooded plan to deprive black citizens full citizenship and the right to vote. By overwhelming the black community, the white leaders suffered no political or legal consequences for their actions. This is the lie in Wilmington they told and lived for several generations.This is a horrifying tale, ably told by a good writer. Recommended for history lovers who can objectively look at the dark side of American history. Also recommended for every high school and college in North Carolina and the southern east coast.