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 North Carolina, Democrats were plotting to take back the state legislature in November "by the ballot or bullet or both," and then 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 8th. 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.
About the Author :
David Zucchino, a contributing writer for the New York Times, is the author of Thunder Run, Myth of the Welfare Queen, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Wilmington's Lie. He has covered wars and civil conflicts in more than three dozen countries. He was also awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his dispatches from apartheid South Africa and is a four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for his reporting from Iraq, Lebanon, Africa, and inner-city Philadelphia.
Victor Bevine, Earphones Award-winning narrator, has worked for over thirty years as an actor, screenwriter, narrator, director, and more. A graduate of Yale University, his acting credits include many prestigious roles onstage as well as roles in the film version of A Separate Peace and countless television shows. He has written several screenplays, including Certainty, which was chosen for two prestigious writers' conferences and which served as the basis for his first novel. His thirty-minute short film Desert Cross, which he wrote and directed, won accolades at the Athens International Film Festival. He serves as CEO of the World Freerunning Parkour Federation, of which he is cofounder.
Review :
"A gripping account of one of the most disturbing, though virtually unknown, political events in American history...Thanks to Mr. Zucchino's unflinching account, we now have the full, appalling story."
-- "Wall Street Journal"
"A judicious and riveting new history."
-- "New Yorker"
"A masterful account."
-- "Publishers Weekly (starred review)"
"He does a lot to explain our own interesting times."
-- "The Guardian (London)"
"Through this act of documenting, he brings truth to the lie."
-- "Southern Review of Books"
"With economy and a cinematic touch, Zucchino recounts the brutal assault on black Wilmington."
-- "New York Times"
