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

The hit new TV series Watchmen, adapted from Alan Moore's comic of the same name, opened its first season with dramatic scenes of widespread white-on-black violence in 1920s Tulsa, Oklahoma, that were so shocking many viewers couldn't believe they were drawn from history. The massacre was all too real, as was an earlier series of events in North Carolina that is the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winner David Zucchino's most recent book. In the 1890s, Wilmington was the state's largest city, home to a thriving black population whose members owned many of the community's businesses and held a number of political offices. All this effort at post-Civil War Reconstruction was torn down in 1898 after what was sometimes referred to (when discussed at all) as a "race riot." In fact, it was an intentionally orchestrated coup, one of the only occasions in American history when a duly elected government was overthrown by violence. The story of how its perpetrators seized control of the state legislature and destroyed the city is essential, jaw-dropping reading. Like David Grann in his Killers of the Flower Moon, Zucchino performs an invaluable service in uncovering history that's too long been suppressed. Unputdownable. —James (from the Madison Books newsletter)