On this day, November 10, 1898, the Wilmington massacre of 1898 began.

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Last edited Fri Nov 11, 2022, 05:01 AM - Edit history (1)

1) David Zucchino’s book, Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy, won a Pulitzer in general nonfiction in 2021.




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.

(Book description from Amazon)

Author interview with the Free Library of Philadelphia

2) The short movie produced by the very far right John Locke Foundation and panned by critics for its disingenuousness and misrepresentation of the event.

The 1898 Wilmington Massacre Was Anything But A Love Story
July 27, 2022

...Snip
The Wilmington Massacre was a devastating blow to what could have truly been something special, something far more special than a fictional love story. North Carolina had a chance to be a progressive state that had elected officials that actually represented the people they were elected by, and that was stolen by violent, petulant white supremacists who were willing to murder hundreds of people to keep their power.

Reframing the massacre as a love story is not only an insult that disrespects the complex history of our state, but it’s also a blatant lie. A lie meant to trivialize and romanticize a violent piece of history and act as a soothing balm over the scorching burn that the January 6th insurrection left on our country. A lie meant to teach young children that “these things happen” and the parts of history that are hard to look at aren’t worth talking about.

Opinion writer for The Charlotte Observer Paige Masten summed it up best: “What happened in 1898 wasn’t a love story, and it’s absurd and callous to rewrite it as such. There’s nothing romantic about institutionalized racism. And most of all, we shouldn’t care about it simply because it was an “important historical event.” We should care about it because it was a violently racist insurrection that made North Carolina a white supremacist state — the remnants of which are still present today.”
Snip...more at the link...
https://ncvoices.com/2022/07/the-1898-wilmington-massacre-was-anything-but-a-love-story/

3) Stage play, What the River Knows, I am proud to say is a production of a friend of mine, Alicia Inshiradu, that opens tonight at Thalian Hall in Wilmington. The play premieres tonight at 7:30. There are additional 7:30 shows on Friday and Saturday, and a 2:00 matinee on Sunday.

You can find out how to purchase tickets here...
https://www.thalianhall.org/river-knows-22


Follow the link below to view the television interview with the Lead actor Joseph Hill.

https://www.wwaytv3.com/this-weekend-stage-play-honors-lives-lost-in-1898-wilmington-massacre/

THIS WEEKEND: Stage play honors lives lost in 1898 Wilmington Massacre
November 10, 2022 Matt Bennett

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — It is 1898 Commemoration week in New Hanover County, and a new stage play aims to educate Wilmington residents about what happened in their city 124 years ago.

‘What the River Knows’ is a play adapted from a short film by the same name, created by Alicia Inshiradu. That film premiered at Cucalorus Film Festival Festival to critical acclaim.

Lead actor Joseph Hill says the play follows the life of a person who owned businesses and property in 1898 before being killed in the massacre.

“It’s really, really important to grasp that this happened to real people,” Hill said. “These people lived lives and have descendants who are still here in Wilmington to this day.”
Snip...more, including the video interview at the link...
https://www.wwaytv3.com/this-weekend-stage-play-honors-lives-lost-in-1898-wilmington-massacre/

4) Short Film THE RED CAPE
Trailer

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6428174/?ref_=ttpl_pl_tt
A young child and his tenacious father struggle to survive a mounting white supremacy campaign that incites the violent 1898 Wilmington Massacre and Coup, a white insurrection that terrorized a thriving black community and became the only Coup d'état in United States history.


Thanks for sharing this mahatmakanejeeves.

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