Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of
White Supremacy, by David Zucchino, chronicles what became a template for the violent
overthrow of Republication governments and the popular vote in the years after the
Civil War. The White Supremacist
Democrats in Wilmington, North Carolina first used fear and violence against black voters and their white allies. They stuffed ballot boxes and kept black voters away from the polls through violence
and intimidate.
After they “won” the election they banished white Republican men from
the town for life, and the black middle class. They then enacted laws that would enable to keep their power in future elections. As the author explains, this coup,
and others like it in other southern towns and cities, led to the formalization of Jim Crow laws in the south, and
peeled back any gains made during and after Reconstruction.
We fought a Civil War, and then lost it in the decades after
the war’s end, through what can only be called in insurgency. Zucchino’s book makes this all too clear:
this was not only a southern event, but an American event. The compliancy of the North and the Federal government allowed this to go unchecked, and will still live
with its consequences.
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