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

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2020

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Book 1

Book 2, Chapters 9-17

Book 2, Chapters 18-25

Book 3, Chapters 26-32

Book 3, Chapter 33-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Media and Propaganda’s Role in Fostering Racism

Wilmington’s Lie focuses on the role of the media in spreading falsehoods or sensational stories to generate public support for the Wilmington coup. Zucchino quotes extensively from news stories from 1898 to demonstrate how newspapers, and in particular Democratic operative Josephus Daniels’s Raleigh News and Observer, contributed to whipping up racism against Black politicians, the Black community, and the white Fusionist politicians who supported them. The highly partisan news environment, as well as the tendency for white Northern reporters to interview white sources rather than Black ones, not only enabled the Wilmington massacre but provided cover for white perpetrators afterward.

The quotes Zucchino provides from contemporaneous news sources lay bare the racist ideology that pervaded in the United States at the time. For example, the Wilmington Journal wrote an editorial that year that stated, “The true soldiers, whether they wore the gray or the blue [fought for the Confederacy or the Union], are now united in their opposition—call it conspiracy and resistance if you will—to negro government and NEGRO EQUALITY” (10). The white supremacist leaders used the newspapers to spread the message that Black political power was dangerous and had to be undermined.

This is especially true of Josephus Daniels’s newspapers. As both a Democratic operative and a newspaper editor, Daniels was uniquely positioned to push narratives he felt would be beneficial to the white supremacy strategy. For instance, on October 18th, 1898, the News and Observer published a story headlined “The Wilmington Negroes Are Trying to Buy Guns” (103). This story, roughly based on the attempts of two Black men in Wilmington to buy rifles, was designed to make the white population of Wilmington afraid of the potential for an organized Black uprising, despite the lack of evidence any such thing was planned.

Although Zucchino’s focus is on the role of Southern newspapers in foresting racist propaganda, he also notes how Northern newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times contributed to the racist narrative that what occurred in Wilmington was a race riot. For example, he describes how the Washington Post correspondent Litchfield West “reported white men’s musings as fact. He published a rambling account, ‘Race War in North Carolina’” (158). This highlights the unwillingness of white Northern reporters to talk to Black residents, ultimately reiterating racist falsehoods such as the idea that Black people were planning a violent attack on the white community.

After the coup on November 10th, 1898, new Wilmington mayor Alfred Waddell ensured that his version of the events was the one published in Collier’s magazine, widely read throughout the northeast. This cemented the narrative that the coup was a necessary uprising against a corrupt city government. As portrayed by Zucchino, the media narrative encouraged, enabled, and excused the violent, unprovoked attack on Wilmington’s Black community and the Fusionist government.

The Fear of Race-Mixing in White Supremacist Ideology

One of the key arguments made by the white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina and elsewhere to justify their attempts to remove Black men from positions of political or economic power centered upon sexual purity and race-mixing. They argued that Black men would be emboldened by their newfound power and would use it to rape white women. This would result in race-mixing and thereby “weaken” the white race. When Alex Manly challenged this view in his editorial, he became a target of their ire. Throughout the white supremacy campaign, the figure of the pure white woman who would be at risk of rape if Black men had power was foregrounded to underline this threat.

Zucchino notes that the white supremacy campaign found ways to drum up fear about the threat to white women posed by Black men holding even the most innocuous government positions. For instance, they warned that “Black men delivered mail to homes at times of day when white women were unattended” (xv). Josephus Daniels would later go on to “report” in his newspaper that Black men in political office were enabling or causing “‘the prevalence of rape by brutal negroes upon helpless white women [which] has brought about a reign of terror in rural districts’” (80). This fearmongering sometimes led to the lynchings of Black men suspected of raping white women, often without basis in fact.

In order to remind the white men who would be voting for the Democratic white supremacy campaign what was at stake, beautiful, young white women would be put on stage to thrill crowds at rallies. For instance, at the Great White Men’s Rally and Basket Picnic, Zucchino describes “a float […] [with] sixteen young white women with names like Pearl and Bessie and Maggie May” (122). A speaker at the rally “said they represented the purity and chastity of all white women in the state” (125). In 1900 when Democrat white supremacist Charles Aycock campaigned for governor he was “often greeted by […] young women who wore white dresses to symbolize purity” (313) at campaign stops. The implication is that white supremacy required strong white men to “protect” the chastity of white women against the threat of the violent Black man.

As Alex Manly’s “scandalous” editorial pointed out, however, this framework was absurd and untrue. White women could and did have consensual relationships with Black men. He also pointed out that white men had often been a threat to Black women, such as white enslavers who raped enslaved women, which created the very kind of mixed-race offspring white supremacists claimed to be so offended by. The racist beliefs around sexual preferences and practices held by the Democrats thus provided the justification and engine of incitement for the white supremacy strategy in 1898 and beyond.

Racial Violence and Political Coups

In Wilmington’s Lie, Zucchino demonstrates that the 1898 coup was a carefully engineered strategy masterminded by two high-level Democratic operatives, Josephus Daniels and Furnifold Simmons. He highlights how the Democrats used “political thuggery” to intimidate Republican candidates and stuff ballot boxes with Democratic votes. In doing so, he explores how the incitement and perpetuation of racial violence underpinned the coup, thereby challenging earlier historical narratives that whitewashed the event as a justified response to a race riot.

One of the key myths about the Wilmington coup that was perpetuated immediately following the events of November 10th, 1898, was that it was a spontaneous and righteous uprising against a corrupt and dangerous city government and Black-organized violence. For example, the Raleigh News and Observer “compared the coup in Wilmington to the French Revolution” (266). The Wilmington Morning Star reported that “‘it was simply the unanimous uprising of the white people against conditions that had become intolerable’” (266). This version of events was repeated in authoritative sources, such as school history textbooks, for decades.

Zucchino, contesting this official narrative, instead begins his chronology of the events with a meeting of Daniels and Simmons in March 1898 in New Bern. At this meeting, they laid out their plans for how to solve “what they called ‘the Negro problem’” (65). Zucchino then goes on to describe the steps they took: Using Daniels’s newspapers to incite resentment and fear of the Black population of Wilmington and the Republican politicians who supported them; the organization of paramilitary and parapolitical groups to mobilize in the election and the coup the following day; the use of violence to intimidate Black voters and Republican politicians like Governor Russell; ballot box stuffing; and, finally, legislation to limit access to the ballot for Black men. This strategy was successful, ensuring Democratic control of North Carolina for decades.

Zucchino connects this political strategy with the Republican strategy in the 2010s to suppress the Black vote through Voter ID laws and gerrymandering. He also interviews the descendants of the Wilmington massacre. These interviews show that white people feel largely justified and unremorseful about their ancestors’ actions while, by contrast, Black descendants echo and lament the hurt and fear the attack caused in their community. Zucchino’s analysis thus suggests that the impacts of the coup and ongoing racial discrimination are still felt in present-day America, inviting readers to consider what lessons the coup of 1898 may contain for contemporary times.