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    Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy
    Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy
    Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy
    Audiobook11 hours

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

    Written by David Zucchino

    Narrated by Victor Bevine

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJan 14, 2020
    ISBN9781980080251
    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.

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    Reviews for Wilmington's Lie

    4.5/5

    77 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is by far, one of the best referenced historical books that explored the Massacre. I believe the author did an impressive job tracing records when many were burned or hidden and explored the political and social reactions towards what happened in NC diligently. The racial and bias tensions were high propagated by media misinformation.
    • 5/5
      Wilmington's Lie, by David Zucchino.
      This is an extraordinary chronicle of one of the most shameful episodes in our nation's history. Tremendous research, good writing, a deep dive into the minds of the inhabitants of the tragedy.
      Worth your time. Especially if you are curious about the next coup attempt.
      Step one: intimidate black voters.
      In 1898 it was threats and violence. Now it's a raft of voter restriction laws, abetted by the SCOTUS, plus lessons from the failure of January 6.
    • 5/5
      Pathetic how much we know about history. I have lived in North Carolina for 35 years and had never heard about this tragedy. The first time I did hear about it, looked for books to read or listen to on the event. I appreciate the History lesson.
    • 5/5
      Growing up during the 50’s and 60’s I was taught a lot that wasn’t true in school. If we don’t learn from history, we’re doomed to repeat it.
    • 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.
    • 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.