The Wilmington Massacre coup required a lot of planning on the part of a smaller group of white supremacists. They had to work against what had become the integrated culture of Wilmington. The cause again was an economic recession, poor whites beginning to resent black economic power. The head of the Raleigh newspaper was part of the “White Supremacy Campaign” to suggest to whites that blacks were sexually insatiable, would take your jobs, and were corrupt. This was a propaganda campaign and a well-armed white populace that wouldn’t sell arms or ammunitions to black population. There was ballot stuffing and intimidation of voters. They had a private militia and two state militias that were members of white supremacy militias.  The author called this a “planned murder spree.”

Alexander Manly. He was a mixed race man, advocate for civil rights, journalist who wrote influential expose accounts, including an editorial about supposed rapes of black men of white women, when white men hypocritically raped black women with impunity. He managed to flee the lynch mob.

How would the history of the United States have been different without this 1890 backlash that led many black citizens to flee Wilmington and leave Wilmington politics until 100+ years later.

I remember when this book came out and it was incredible to me, as a native North Carolinian who had never heard of this story.