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Understanding 9/11tv Cape Fear Rising CSPAN August 23, 2017 12:28am-12:49am EDT
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proud of your heritage. be proud of the traditions of your family. but, never feel that you have to live up to that, to that legacy. you must be your own person and that is something that all of us carried with us our entire liv lives. >> we are here on the riverwalk and historic wilmington north carolina. as we continue or look into the cities nonfiction literary culture, will hear an author story about the 1898 political coup sparked by racial tensions. >> standing right here in front ofgh the 290 memorial which was put up on the hundredth anniversary of the events that occurred so long time coming, it was controversial because there many citizens, both black and
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white who wanted to forget theet whole thing in the black community thought that if they brought it up too much it might bring further repercussions. in the white community preferred no unintended right whitewash the past. as one radio host said you can't put something behind if you don't put it beside you. >> in 1898 wilmington had achieved a different status. this was a huge slave area because of the river which was a block away. all the plantation were along the river, the row know, a huge concentration of 330 and 1860 were right here so there is always a fear of an uprising which is a terrible nightmare. they had very oppressive laws against both free breakfast
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blacks and slaves all throughout this time. when general sherman came and invaded not from the north but from the south he liberated some 25000 and slave blacks with the army. he had them ahead of navigation. and he put all those people on flat boats and brought them to wilmington where their process out. a great many stayed here. ca until night 1898 wilmington was one of the largest cities in of the 17000 citizens, two thirds black. they had achieved an amazing thing in a little more than aomn generation with not even owning the close on their back they choose status of middle-class, p political leadership and power. social standing and economic wealth got the reputation as a great place come to work if you're black.
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african-americans were skilled artisans in the cotton mills so is a great place in a huge driving block. they had taken political part of power from democrats. in those days democrats and republicans were reversed. in 1888 the democrat party decided to take back their state cities from what they thought of as negro domination. this is their way of putting it in they wanted to take back all the offices there are going to be coming up which included af lot of the state office but it did not include the city council or the mayor. so what they did was basically stole the election through intimidation, literally guys with shotguns and people stealing ballot boxes leading up to that they had a war words and
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the war words took an interesting turn. there is anti- black speeches all over the state. the most famous was odell who is an ex- kernel. another piece of writing, the newspaper in alexander manley who published a newspaper he built the first african-american newspaper called the daily record. it was a newspaper for community within a community. was largely ignored by the whitm community. he had an editorial and he was responding to a speech given by rebecca who is the wife of a congressman and she ended up going to congress herself and what she said the greatest danger to white farm across the south and if it took lynching a thousand blacks than so be it. she was all in favor of lynching. the newspaper responded this i
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spent a little bit of doubt whether he wrote the editorial himself. makes a spe but he says this is elton from georgia makes a speech before the agricultural society inn which she advocates lynching is an extreme measure. this woman makes a strong plea for womanhood and crimes of rape that are have times recorded it would be worthy of consideration but we suggest that whites guard their women more closely as mrsg opportunity for the human being being white or black.aw you lead your good set of doors and then complain because they're taken away. poor white men are careless and protecting their women on the farms. he says white women are attracted to blackman and the like. it's unclear whether this is abu satire of others to curious
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things about it. the thing he was respondingspawi about it happened a year earlier. so why that earlier he chose to respond, we don't know. also, nobody in the white community read the paper until somebody did and then they reprinted the editorial in the e front page which is a white newspaper, pretty much every day until the election between august and november. so the gate began to be calls it a couple of this and othergovert events, why government unions are making the rounds and these are basically cadres of people who come into the community make the case that you should fire your black workers and give your jobs to whites and so you'rere starting to see this a little bit. and then the white man's declaration of independence and
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this was signed by more than 400 of the leading white citizens just a little while before the election. it begins this way.contempl believe in the constitution of the united states contemplated a government to be carried on by unenlightened people believing that his framers did not anticipate the franchise meant of an ignorant population and believing those men in the state of north carolina who joined informing the union do not contemplate their descendentsto subjection to an inferior race. so the night before election day the colonel stood on stage, gave what was later described as a sizzling speech and he said ifll you see the negro voting, tell them to go home. if he will go home, shoot him down in his tracks. so there's nothing subtle about this in the place erected into applause. that was the tone that was said for election day the following mo
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morning. so there's nothing subtle about this. there is nuances in the sense of a power grab going on. furthermore, they had already made arrangements in washington with the mckinley administration that no federal troops to come to the eight of wilmington. they would leave them to settle their own things. so, they ran the table on election day, white supremacy candidate selected across the board but they still didn't have the board of alterman or the mayor. so then they sent an ultimatum to a committee of color citizens that were chosen at random. it had the demands that were in the white declaration of independence. in the black community met and they decided pretty much to give them what they wanted. there shut down the paper and
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then they never reached a cohort because the man who is supposed to deliver it mailed instead. so november 10, about 8:00 o'clock in the morning or so, crowd up to a thousand armed white man gathered ms betweeney fourth and fifth the market street, they might marched up and then rampaged on down to the daily record which was leasing the hall. when they got there they surrounded it, bashed in the door, shot one man who remained unidentified to history who ran kut the back wounded and then burn down the newspaper. in so doing they not only stop manley, he was not the newspaper that point he fled the city with his brother, but then they actually burn the archive of the black community. copy of all the records are hard to find even a single copy of the daily record. i think there's three or four around.s there's the famous picture of
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all these white men in the sun standing in front of the burned-out hulk holding shotguns and winchesters. they kept the fire brigade to ensure that it was fire to the ground and only if it look like the church next-door what fire did they allow them to fight the blaze. so they start to disperse and go home when they get over to bladen street and there's some black working men who find out what's going on. at that point gunfire erupted. we know couple things. one that all the deborah black, we know rampage lasted about three days the outbreak was probably spontaneous, but theite way community under several of the leaders had been stockpiling rifles. they had a machine gun and all of a sudden all these militia
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groups are coming in from elsewhere.kingston so, it would take a couple of hours for each to get here and they showed up immediately. the knee had the infantry which is a military organization recently demobilized with all their high-powered rifles. the wilmington naval reserve in a small howitzer. in these people shut down wilmington because of martial law. they were strip searching black men women and children on every corner. there black letter carriers were beaten nearly to death and some white women came to the rescue and got the hooligans oftenth there is a number of other white women who sheltered in their home to keep them safe but this is catastrophic for wilmington. a lot of the people being chased and harassed and shouted fled the city, swim the river went out to smith creek and hid in the swamp.eries.
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they were for three days only ten shut down. you can pretty much mark the end of their descendents in north carolina to the date of this queue. it's been called the riot but it was really a coup. at gunpoint at city hall they made them all resign and appointed white supremacist down the line and the leader of the violence becomes the mayor. and becomes a multi- term mayor. when he dies there's a huge funeral and he is eulogized as a fine figure of seven children. no legal action was ever taken to bring any of these guys to justice. in fact george rountree went to the statehouse and king concocted a piece of legislation called the grandfather clause. this legislation basically took voting rights way from blacks
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until 1965. not just in north carolina but drops south because it was copied by states all over the mason-dixon. the said huge repercussions. it had huge right repercussion right here locally and of course it took the african-americanouto community in about a thousand people we know were driven there people put on the train they vanish from wilmington. there were local leaders and lawyers, preachers, funeral directors, local politicians, the people who to this point have been the african-american policemen, firemen, sheriff's deputy and so on. and wilmington went back to being ruled by white supremacist so, that's a big legacy to overcome. one of the things i think about since so many of the people involved on the white side went
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on to have very prosperous lives, children and grandchildren all who stayed here. they built their wealth, some like the keenan family became great philanthropists. we great deal to limit the university and elsewhere. but they came back and so, you have a situation where the intelligence and the leadership of the black community is wiped out for a generation. and from there were looking atat something no more than a hundred years later and people ares asking the question of what can we do to change it. and wilmington behind every decision about rezoning or redistricting school or neighborhood schools or whetherr
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or not we should have a large voting for city council, all of that has a legacy directly tied to 1898 is were the future of that history. so i think of that as being like the tunnels that run under wilmington from about seventh street down to the river. there these drainage tiles that used to come up in all the fine houses and churches. there originally for drainage but probably also use for theedb things. the kind of a secret underneath the traffic on the street. ice think of that as being that little secret that runs under the city. until this memorial does not acknowledge. it was really something that was whispered about usually in versions that were far less than accurate. we don't how many people died. i think they say ten on the monument but jailing clerk on fourth street but the number
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over 400. one of the legends they grow based on eyewitness testimonies that wagon loads of bodies were dumped into the river. that's become the image of thisd violence is that these bodies being dumped into the river. it's hard to know because there's no investigation, nobody looking into this or nobody counting or interviewing witnesses. it's all speculation. my guess is it was way more than ten people not 400 but it really rocked the core of this community, black-and-white. i came from chicago, a very diverse city. i got here and realize that everywhere i went i was either with all white people are all black people. if i went to certain music it was all white or all black. and i thought what is going on here. as i began digging i learned and nobody had written about it much. the most famous one was charles
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chestnut i was interested in the motivation of these guys. you're talking about people who are family men, good fathers and husbands, people who are deacons in their churches in one case a pastor of a church. is trying to imagine my way into their mindset. the practical question was there were 70 or 80 people who figured into the narrative and i can get my hands were on that. so i picked representatives of each of the facets, the planners, the victims and so forth and use those to tell the story. i was as scrupulous as i could be about putting the events on paper.be so the novel you read about someone being shot at certain intersection or certain speech be in may, that happened. where i took liberties was creating composite characters that can move back-and-forth into the secret counsel because
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they did not keep minutes of their meetings. so i knew him moved in and i was very much interested in imagining my way into their morality their way of thinking and trying to pull truth of how the human character behavedre while remaining true to the historical event. that's why wrote it as a novel. many people have the reactiong . that you just made that up, that never happened. i can't tell you how many radio interviews i did. they say he just makes it up. that never happened.hu i've had conversations with hundreds of people who set i grew up in this county and we studied history learned about the civil war, we never heard anything about this.ne prior to the novel i was asked to meet with all the university officials were concerned that something would happen.
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the sheriff at that point the local police chief got involved and got together with the chancellor and campus and talked about what might happen when the book came out. in the event, nothing happened. but what did happen was phone calls to me, letters to the editor, that kind of speaking engagements that went away, to various organizations. another is at least a couple of boards that met related to various places in wilmington that tried to figure out whether they could see me for this. but everybody in the book was deceased. there is nothing there. i just learned last year as i wrot wrote this book as a tenured professor. i just learned that our board a trustee was going to deny my
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tenure based on this book. it turned out it was on keenan, one of the descendents and he apparently stood up for the integrity of the university and said you cannot do that. so i was saved. all that's to say that this event will it seems like ancient history in the past is in. it really resonates as though it happened yesterday. we have recognize this and it's fully in the sunlight. not signaling this out there were just victims here and there only victims because of their own success in doing one of the most remarkable transformations of anyone i know coming from slavery into a prosperous middle class. what i would like to do is and
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it's been is slow move back. but i like the people who come here to encourage the process by which we get back the position of having that leadership and all the communities working forr the common good. >> located in downtown richmond, the white house of theth confederacy is were confederate president jefferson davis and his family lived from 1861 until the evacuation of richmond in 1865. following the end of the war it became a headquarters for the u.s. army, in 1870 it was given back to the city of richmond. the home has been restored and is open to the public is amusing. up next, we visit the edgar allen poe museum. the only museum dedicated to a literary figure. >> edgar allen poe is the writer who put american literature on a the map.
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