Wilmington’s Lie
Answer the following questions within the body of your essay:
According to Zucchino, what about the demographics of Wilmington in 1898 made it unique? Democrats were the party of white supremacy; the Republicans were the ones that African Americans joined and supported. So you had this black middle class and meaningful representation in government. According to Zucchino, how did whites handle this? What were race relations like in the city? There was a very influential piece by an African American newspaper editor, Alex Manly, which played a role in all of these events. Using specific details from Wilmington’s Lie, describe in detail who Alex Manly was and what role his newspaper played in Wilmington. November 8 was election day in Wilmington and across the state.
Using specific examples from the book, what was the plan of Wilmington’s white supremacists and what eventually happened in Wilmington?
Using specific examples from the book, discuss in detail the response of the governor of North Carolina, as well as that of President William McKinley to the events in Wilmington. What prevented both men from intervening?
This wasn’t simply a change of government. It was a radical transformation of the lives of black citizens. African Americans were successful attorneys and merchants who had real lives and stakes in the community and lots of black people who were employed in working-class roles. How were their lives affected by this?
One little detail which underlined the permanence of these changes were that Tom Miller, this wealthy black citizen of Wilmington, the real estate broker who was banished from the city, years later asked permission to just come back to attend his mother’s funeral. What happened?
According to Zucchino, this was America’s first and only armed overthrow of a legally elected government, and that’s because there were local officials who were not on the ballot; that, even after these horrific events, were technically still in office, legally elected – some of them African Americans.
What happened to them?
According to Wilmington’s Lie, after this violence in 1898, what measures were – did the white leaders enact to make permanent the denial of voting rights for blacks?
In the decades that followed, how were these violent events characterized by white papers, white newspapers and leaders in the South? In 1998, as the 100th anniversary of the events in Wilmington was approaching, there was quite a debate about how these events were to be regarded. How did the community contend with this legacy?
Had you known of the Wilmington massacre before reading David Zucchino’s book? If so, what was your understanding of the events recounted in the book? Josephus Daniels, publisher of the Record, and Furnifold Simmons of the state’s Democratic Party were able to exploit the anger and fears of the white population through an intentional campaign of disinformation.
Is today’s public as gullible as it was at the turn of the 20th century?
Or, given the impact of social media, are we perhaps more so? Does Wilmington’s Lie challenge your view of who we are as a nation? Have we changed over the past 120+ years? How or how not?
