you can find books and podcasts on the c-span now app or wherever you get your podcast. c-span's american history tv continues now, you can find the full scheduling for the weekend on your program guide or at c-span.org/history. >> good afternoon, i'm carole bucy and i'm the moderator of this session, david zucchino's book, the rise of white supremacy. it is honor for us to have the book here at the southern festival and david won pulitzer prize for 2021 for nonfiction

for this book. it is a very important book and i hope if you haven't read it, you will certainly be inspired to read it after our session today. david zucchino is a contributing writer to "the new york times" and most recent articles are about the war in afghanistan, the withdrawal and the overall condition of the country there. he did win a for pulitzer in south africa and he's been nominated for journalism four different times in addition to that. so without further due i want to introduce you to our author david zucchino? >> thank you, carole, wonderful to be here. i'm going to talk to maybe 10 or 15 minutes and give you sort of an overview of the book and what it's about and just sort of

ground you and i think we will go to some questions from carole and then hopefully questions from you in the audience. so i'd like to begin today to talk about a event event from 123 years ago that still reverberates in some of the racism, carried out the only armed overthrow of an elected government in american history. white vigilantes and white state militia drove 200 black citizens and at the time wilmington had the few multiracial governments in the south with black pen in prominent positions but the white mob evicted the city's 3

block and mayor and other leaders at gunpoint and installed coup leaders in their place. they burned the city's black newspaper and tried to lynch the black publisher and vanished black leaders who survived the assault. excuse me. these black and white leaders were marched at gunpoint to wilmington tape station, thrown aboard trains and told don't come back or we will kill you on site and not one of them ever did return, not one ever came back. the 1898 coup was a pivotal event not just north carolina but the entire south. it cemented white supremacy as state and state policies for the next 60 years and inspired whites across the south to use violence and terror the black vote and black majority city into white supremacist, wilmington was 66% black in 1998, in fact, it had the highest population, the highest

black population among any major city in the south at the today. today wilmington is 18% black. after the coup, black citizens did not vote in significant numbers in almost 70 years until after passage of the voting rights act in 1965. now, in 1996 two years before the coup, there were 126,000 registered black voters, 126,000. by 1902 just four years after the coup, the number had been cut to 6,000. so you can see how effective this coup was in just destroying the ability for black men to vote. in 1891 there was just one black in congress in either the senate or the house. george henry white from a north carolina district next to wilmington. white supremacists hounded congressman white and his family so viciously that he left north carolina forever in 1900's. white's parting words, i can not

remain in north carolina and be created as a man. no black citizens served in congress in north carolina until 1992, almost a hundred years later. a century almost this coup prevented or led the effort to prevent black citizens from serving in public office in washington from north carolina. were forced and no black citizens served in the wilmington city council until 1972, more than 70 years later. coup also provided the blueprint for terror and intimidation in the south and wilmington was among the first cities to get jim crow laws when they segregated the streetcars. in 1906 white supremacist in georgia plotted to steal by attacking black voters but first they consulted with wilmington's

coup leaders on how to do it. hope smith later elected governor in election said, quote, we can handle the black the way they handled them in wilmington. now most of you probably never heard of the wilmington coup until i read about centennial events in wilmington in newspaper coverage in 1998. i hadn't either and i went to high school and college in north carolina. the coup was never mentioned by any professor or any history book in all the classes i took. now, many people who have read the book have the same two questions i had when i first learned of the coup in 1998. one, how could i not know about this and two, how could this happen in the united states of america. i think the best answer i can give is this is a forgotten chapter of american history that was covered up or mischaracterized for a century and it happened at a time when white supremacy went up

challenged. now after 1898, white supremacists leaders in wilmington wrote the narrative of their coup. they portrayed it as a, quote, good government initiative that replaced corrupt and incompetent black leaders with honest white men and they claimed it was black men not white supremacists who were stockpiling weapons and plans a race riot. they called the coup a race riot, blacked-inspired riot. a century later it was still being referred to as a, quote, race riot but, in fact, it was a racial massacre, a planned murder spree and the white supremacist coup and that's why it's called wilmington's lie for the lie that stood for decades. it's hard to believe now but no one was ever held accountable. no one was ever arrested or charged for the murders or for the coup and the federal government did absolutely nothing. now, why is wilmington such a

threat to blacks, first it was a black majority city at the time when almost all major southern cities had white majorities. second, wilmington was an outlier and bold experiment and multiracial government 30 years after the civil war. black men served in positions of authority. ten of wilmington's police officers were black men. the county treasurer, the county jailer and the county coroner welcome black men and so were many magistrates and they presided in cases that had white defendants. the federal's custom was a black man who earned more than the white governor. now this was intolerable to white supremacists. they vowed to overthrow, quote, negro rule and, quote, negro domination. they had a name for their efforts. they proudy called it the white supremacy campaign. they issued a book for white voters explaining white

supremacy and black inferiority. this is a white man's country and white man must control and govern it. the book was called the democratic handbook and because the coup leaders announced intentions well beforehand this was a national story. in fact, a lot of the research that i was able to do for this book came from newspaper stories in particular in the national press as well as the north carolina press. national newspapers, "the new york times", the washington post, the philadelphian, chicago tribune, many, many others sent reporters all white men, of course, to cover the, quote, race war in wilmington. they were met at the train station by white supremacist leaders who arranged their lodging and gave them cigars and whiskeys. reporters were escorted around

by white gunmen to guard against a purported black riot. they repeated the white narrative that black men were planning to riot and kill white men and rape white women. and just as a side note, i read hundreds of newspaper articles from 1898 and did not find a single instance where a white reporter interviewed a black citizen which i found just absolutely remarkable. now, there have been other so-called race riots in america in tulsa, chicago, atlanta, elsewhere generally and racial revolution carried out by armed vigilantes and it was america's only permanent violent overthrow of an elected government.

now you this major event would be described in north carolina history books and when it was mentioned it was portrayed heroic white response to black race riot and good government effort to replace corrupt negro rule. and closing, let me just read you some descriptions of the coup that appeared in north carolina public high school textbooks that help people the lie alive. again, this is from state sanctioned public textbooks for high school students. there's a quote from a public school textbook 1933, quote, there were many negro office holders some of whom were poorly fitted for their tasks. this naturally aroused ill feelings between the races, end quote. passage from 1940, massive negroes became poor citizens to keep their vote allowed them to do very much as they pleased. worst crimes were not punished.

the why people of the south are no longer safe and this is from 1949 textbook. a number of blacks were jailed for starting a riot and new white administration took over end quote. this is from 1940 textbook about the kkk, the klan and the red shirt who is were the armed vigilantes in 1891 used by the white supremacists to intimidate black people, quote, to put an end to this terrible condition, white people joined together in the sort of club which they named the ku klux klan and at night the men can be seen on horseback riding bring order to the lives of the people and such sights frightened negro people. negro or white who had done wrong were listed. the klan would visit the men and punish them according to wrongs they had done after the lawless men was no so bold and crime

became less and less, end quote. on that note, i will stop here and answer a few questions from carole and i will take questions from all of you. thank you very much for listening. >> thank you, dared. it really is a wonderful introduction to what is a very powerful book and it is really gripping to see what is going on and -- and one to have things that just amazed me so much about the book was some of your sources were these -- these things that the perpetrators of this coup had proudly written for the rest of the world to see and -- and give them accolades for what they were doing to bring what they believed in their heads was good government. >> exactly, i thought that was one of the most remarkable things i came across when researching the book, how many diaries, newspaper editorials and letters and memoirs were

written by the perpetrators openly bragging about what they had done and really virtues of white supremacy and pointing out that this coup was so effective that it's basically eliminated the black men not only from voting but from politics. and after that first generation died out, it was really interesting. then suddenly all of the information went quiet and people just stopped talking about it and i think the next generation realized how painful that must be for their black neighbors and how embarrassing it was for the world to neglect that the truth, so it was sort of buried after that, after the first generation died out and wasn't really talked about except in certain occasions like textbooks i mentioned where it's mentioned in passing but very much as a triumph of good government and good order. >> and it's just a matter of human nature to some degree that

the descendants of the perpetrators may be somewhat embarrassed but they are not going to speak totally openly about what they know about what their grandfather or great grandfather did. i was interested that you were able to even get interviews with some of those descendants. .. >> and the matters that were attacked and i spoke him and in fact, the first job at the school was at raleigh in order for mr. daniels. and i were there for five years and i had no idea that he had been involved in white supremacy

and are in the newsroom but they were on this crusading editor who is a wonderful person and never mentioned of white supremacy but in talking to his grandson, and then talking to the grandson of another leader, they both said interestingly that the grandfather was a man of the time and that they were selected the beliefs and the moralities of the time and during that time it was accepted the black people were inferior to the white people and they were performing a sort of a public service in bringing sort of the best people to the government and they seem to me that they sort of rationalized the roles of the grandfather. the saying of course that it was wrong to today's standards but nobody was doing anything like that today but you have to understand what the conditions in the environment was back in

1898. >> around the hundredth anniversary when the story came out, of the coup, the state of north carolina than hello point a special commission to really fare out from all of the mythology about it from both the african-american population who had some families interested in the story as well as the descendents, how did that commission finally come to grips with all of the information if they were finding. >> it was five years, 467 pages of the report and their conclusion was first of all, this was not a riot, this was a coup and then it did set black voting rights back for decades and still white supremacy in the state policy and all of that.

they did correct the historical record and finally, more than 100 years later we finally get the truth. and a lot of people weren't paying attention there was not a whole lot of blessed even in north carolina much less nationally so it kind of slipped by and people didn't know because they didn't know about the coop to begin with so they tended not to read about an explanation for something that happened so long ago they didn't know about in first place. >> we have a question from eric call, this is this question, but with a little presses, 19 oh one, historical novel, the merit of tradition uses the lincoln massacre as the central conflict, chestnut makes it clear that the white mobs are responsible for the massacre of black americans in his novel any do you think that it took so

long to reveal the true narrative. >> that's a terrific book and i use it as one of my sources, it was very much useful for getting a feel of wilmington and the people and the environment but as far as the story coming out, you have to remember this was a black author and why people back then did not read black authors. so it obviously enlighten the black truth printed black people but it was already known but he didn't have a lot of impact until 100 years later to the story came out but if anybody was really interested in this history, it is worth reading that book to get first of all the african-american perspective and when we were talking about the state report a little while ago, the report made a big point of how difficult it was to get the black perspective because so

much of the narrative was told by whites. and black citizens and women were running for the lives they were leaving town they lost everything so they were really in a position to write memoirs or diaries they were running for their lives and of course, the black people do not dare send my people into cover this but there were sort of the rate resource for me, the black press and other cities or people from only ten fled. within days after the coop really kind of got it interviews real-time interviews with the survivors so that was an excellent source of the black point of view. >> the african-american community are reading your book and after reading it i realize how well-educated it was, nor strong teachers there and also

for doctors and lawyers who had been trained in all sorts of institutions around the country. one of the centerpieces of the book that i saw, where these competing newspaper stories and the spark i suppose, for starting the decision that we have got to take over here, from the white supremacist there was an editorial in the african-american paper record by manley, the editor has written something that really provoked the rights to wilmington. >> alex manley was actually the grandson of a white governor but he lived his life as a black man and he was a very aggressive journalist and he started a daily black readership is favoring wilmington in august of

1898 and he read a speech from a white congressman in georgia in which he said the solution in the so-called race epidemic on white women and black men but there was no epidemic but she said there was in the solution she said was the lynch rope. and she said i say lynch a thousand times a week net if necessary she was telling the men of georgia they needed to go after this to stop this race epidemic. any heard about this and he sat down today he found out about it in august and he wrote a very much an editorial that was absolutely shocking to the white supremacist and white across the south and was reprinted across the south essentially he said that most black men who were mentioned were supposedly raping white women in fact, they were consensual and secondly he pointed out when everyone knew, but he put it in writing that iceman had an raping lack women

generations with impunity. this absolutely and since the white community in fact the vigilantes who wanted the lynching that day just to show you how premeditated the coup was in the coup leaders in the outcome of this into early and will have a much better political impact if we wait closer to the election in november and then you can lynch manley and then burn down his newspaper and they did for now the newspaper but he was warned a couple of days before hand that of lynch mob was looking for him and he fled and he never went back. >> and rebecca felton is the woman that you are talking about and you know, she really was on one level of feminist and then on the other hand, she was a white supremacist and you do see that women's suffrage was tied in with the white supremacy and both sides, they were saying

that the people who are supporting it, played the race card quite loudly. and they were trying to get the views known across the country but particularly across the south. there's a lot of this business about the luncheon, probably every state, since slavery was legal at the time of the civil war, but there was this tremendous figure and if you can spread fear you can capture the attention of almost anybody in his every african-american male and potential rapists and we had a protect our southern women. in one of the things he gave me a little bit of a chuckle in this book was when the legislature in north carolina is discussing the laws and they

comment was made that you better not go too far into this one because most of the white members of the legislature are probably guilty. and that did give me a small chuckle and they were going after them in the south and all of this about the book. >> it was a white judge made a comment hand is shut down all attempts to pass a law and they just quit after that. but they certainly used in a newspaper to inside the race was the black people - and implanted in particular the all of these funny stories about black men supposedly preying on white women and that was completely false but the narrative was that you better get your guns and go out and lynch lachman because they are coming for your women it braided they will read them there was a real strong component of the white supremacy campaign and the other component was that black men were not

capable enough or intelligent enough to vote and they certainly were not competent enough to serve in public office and that message went home to the white leadership the newspapers into remember this pr was indeed it sort of a source of information that was the entire news media but they work very very effective at disinformation and fake news. >> they did get their point through to the people in one of the things that you mentioned with events in these people are stockpiling weapons and we have seen in some stockpiling in more recent times. the people were stockpiling in the kinds of weapons, the white supremacist had unmasked during the planning of this was just astonishing to me and i can only

imagine the terror that some of these african-americans felt when they see all of this because they are already - so one of the most painful parts of the book to me, was that african-american families like they had to get out of their houses that day because they were going to be burned or killed and they went into the swamps and into the cemetery on november 9th, it was cold and wet and they had laying there in the sweat cemetery for a couple of days, two women give birth and die in the cemetery. and the children died and then when they finally get brave enough to give back, the children are wet, they are crying and it was such a descriptive seen that i can visualize what it was like for

those people afraid to go back but knowing they were all going to die out there in the cemetery. >> they left their homes with no warning at all and they knew something was coming within when they seek 60 black men murdered in the streets, they ran for the lives. you mentioned the guns, there were several more correspondences said wilmington was probably the best - city in america, pistols and in fact the gun stores ran out of weapons and ammunition and they had to tell grave under telegraph to love these weapons and ammunition on trains and send them down to wilmington and at the same time, all the gun dealers were white and they refuse to sell to black men. so they had very few weapons on the other very very effective tactics in the white supremacist use was to make sure the white, the there were two white militias who basically national guard of the day, the infantry

of the wilmington and the navy and proposal blake they were commanded and made up of white supremacist and basically took orders from the white supremacist leaders of this campaign. the summer of 1980 in the white militias and two black companies were called out from the war and white supremacist leaders make sure that the white units were back in wilmington in time for the coup and they work over the also be sure the two black units were in georgia on the base on a training base and he could not get back because i was the only armed young lachman and city. if they were out of the city they make sure they did not come back in and they unleashed it to militias on the black population and actually the summer, the two militias were equipped with what they called guns with the first

machine gun that they put on back of a wagon and they were paid for it and emerges to make sure they had enough firepower to put down before the black riot food. >> you mentioned the spanish-american war and the african-americans had even before november 10th, they may fleet to president william mckinley and mckinley was a son of abolitionist and tell us about president mckinley reluctance to resolve his response as well as the response of other national leaders. >> he was the son of an abolitionist and he was an abolitionist himself and in the union army as an officer. he was very much against slavery and against segregation and in fact, when he was running as a candidate for president, he was the first presidential candidates to address the white

audience on the campaign trail so to me, his response was minimal. and as you mentioned, he was mortified george and rick by the congressman and by black ministers for moment and who traveled to washington warned mr. president, there's a coupe being planted in their already white people are beating and intimidating and terrorizing black men the funniest to. and he did nothing after the coup the congressman white and ministers went back and again and sent federal troops to protect the stockmen and he made no, ever upon that publicly about the coup. except in one cabinet meeting and the topic of the federal troops and marshals but nothing ever happened, no one was ever held accountable there was a grand jury set up but white

witnesses refuse to cooperate in nobody was indicted and no one was arrested and no one was ever jailed or convicted and they completely got away with it. >> it's interesting to me that mckinley as a republican politician, do you really care much about the south because the republicans in those days were not carrying any southern states anyway. north carolina and tennessee and the border states and the populations of the republicans in the mountains more or less, part of north carolina in the eastern part of tennessee and yet i can't understand why president mckinley could not take a strong position about this because it surely was not because he was afraid he was going to list to the south in 1900 election. >> perplexes me as well but i think he made a calculation it

with his coup he figured that it would spread the back and there would be no black opening realize that and lacks help put him in office those important to him to get elected because i think he realized now because of the voter intimidation of the white supremacy movement across the south, he didn't want them and take a nice the white leadership which team needed in congress not necessarily to get elected because as you mentioned the republicans didn't view the south anyway but i think that he made a calculation that he needed them. so i think he just kept quiet for whatever reason i can find nowhere a records that he made a public comment about wilmington writing a lot in his mind because of the peace talks and the french american war a lot of political pressure so i don't think this was a big issue for him pretty. >> i don't think it was a big issue in the whole subject of the voting rights with all of

this, this whole racial tensions is coming up was that jim crow politics and whatnot across the south, but was interesting to me to learn in your book was the extent of the communication between the white supremacist in north carolina and also in louisiana for example. the ideas that they came these grandfather clauses in other ways to prevent african-american voting and can you say a little bit about the grandfather clause and some of the other laws that they were swapping ideas about. >> and largely newspaper coverage and you mentioned the grandfather clause and then use them in louisiana and the editor was not a journalist, he was a politician the newspaper and he actually was on the executive committee of the democratic party and help them in the meetings.

in the white supremacist realized they had a problem first full with the taxes and there were a lot of poor whites who cannot afford the poll taxes so they would be harmed and then the literacy test, almost 25 percent of the white electors were in north carolina at the time they were illiterate so they had to get around that problem and what they did was copy to certain extent of louisiana centers in north carolina that if you ancestor but it 1868, and you are eligible to vote in 1868 was a pivotal year because that's the year lachman got to vote of course no blackman health and ancestor who voted because they didn't vote until then so it disqualified all black voters except maybe those that the grandfather was white to some extent but that was a minority so basically, it eliminated blackman from voting but made

them out to the poor whites and illiterate whites is a very effective piece of legislation that passed in the 19 hundreds and played a big role and black citizens for not voting for 70 years in north carolina pretty. >> definitely suppress the vote all across the south i think you are right about that. in this writing engine bryant and it lynching get started in one thing that i should not have been surprised of was that the groups of men started to come to wilmington pretty they wanted to get in on the fight and the action there and that was very surprising to me predict. >> yes through shocking think that the governor was a republican, he was from wilmington and he was part of his grandfather's growing up in a plantation but he was moderate by the standards of the time and absolutely prolonged the black

vote from putting him in office and yet he gave the order that day, the day of the coup, for the two white supremacist militia to go out into the streets and started putting down the riot. i was a pivotal moment and i think he was completely intimidated by the white supremacist but he was related to a lot of them. they threatened his life and they threaten to impeach him so i think he was so intimidated that he did whatever they wanted when he stood by and did absolutely nothing is a black simpson for murder in the streets rated and indirectly, his lawyer said predict to militias to put down this reportedly back riot. >> in north carolina they also have this other kind more group, tell us a little bit about this pretty. >> actual diffusion is what allowed this i guess you would

call it the progressives of the day to take over the wilmington city government in an election in 1897, and the people's party which was maybe are mainly poor white farmers who had become disenchanted with the democratic leadership. but they felt that they were being ignored by the bankers, railroads and lawyers and these were poor white farmers who had more basic issues like education for their children and prices and support for farmers and they in the region or had an allegiance to the republican party which meant it would be black voters because almost all blacks at that time they voted with the republican party as of this was called fusion, the white farmers in the white and black republicans and strong enough to take the state legislature and think in 1896 and also 1997 and they took over and took power in wilmington and was a very that enraged the

white supremacist semi sedate plan the coup read. >> it was very interesting to me that the from my perspective the main leader of the coup was alfred waddell and yet somewhere in the middle of the coup, no lynching and they were looking for alex manley and they had looked all around the city and he said, no lynching. in the most silly thing i suppose one of them is your most printed somewhere against the fusionist mayor out of office and so all the government officials even though the majority of the government officials, all thought that waddell has control of the whole city pretty.

>> and that is why he is put into this awkward position, it was to give these speeches, really inciting white men for attacking blackman in terrorizing and then keep them from voting in fact, the night before the election he told them that if they went out they saw blackman trying to vote, they should order him to go home braided and shoot them in their tracks that was a direct quote. in fact after they at gunpoint removed the police chief they held a postelection, a fake election and he was elected as mayor braided so he was named as mayor and then put into position for having to now provide public security and protect the citizens black and white and giving the speeches and then he would take home and put down your guns but this violence that he incited, had gotten out of control then he finds himself in

this awkward position of saying, it is not such a great idea now that i am in charge. and so everybody go home. >> so they control the narrative of how the story is going to be told we were saving wilmington in north carolina and we were saving the south. >> and white women if especially pretty. >> and a lot of things that you said in the book and i will have to paraphrase it but it was something that even though the slavery had ended with the civil war and the white people understood that slavery did not exist, the black people were still black and that was what made all the difference to these folks and it was so totally racially motivated and so i'm curious to find out more about what happened in wilmington after world war i when we had

the riot in tulsa in the rejuvenation in stone mountain georgia, and in the 1925 plans convention in washington where they probably marched down pennsylvania avenue. and this was only one of these massacres that took place and there were lots of these kinds of things across the south. we hope your readers will take away from this book. >> i wanted to correct the historical record until the true story of what happened and i hope the people will take from this book is that the danger and the power of the demagogues and the disinformation, using

violence for political and is dangerous, is a real deepened and embedded part of our history as institutionalized racism and learn to recognize those signals that tell you that this is happening again and it seemed that a lot today vertically when trump was president and the demagogues and the misinformation and i see this thing repeated so i hope that learning something from this book is to be aware that democracy is very fragile and once you start this violence for whatever reason, it is hard to stop it in a sort of like a handout and i see it as a position today particular with that january 6th insurrection which was very similar to what happened in 1998 where people would essentially the equated patriotism with vigilantism and they were told that was a way of

life in their country was being taken from them that was 1898 and also in recent, people responded with violence and protecting what they thought was their way of life. >> and certainly, this part of democracy is that we had to be vigilant, we lived in this wonderful place and we have to be vigilant and voting is power. and we need to make sure the franchises there for people to be able to view and use that power to have a say in government so i want to say thank you to you david for writing this book and i would say thank you to all of our viewers for participating in using and watching the session and encouraging you to get this book from your local public library or purchase the book and read it, it is a very important book that i think that every american needs to read it to understand many of the things that are taking place from time to time across the country and

actually indeed across the world and so i want to close with a quote, from james he passed away a few weeks ago this is what he said about american history and how american history is taught which of course is a debate across the country right now. avoid should be taught and what should be obeyed to date in the teaching of american history in this what he said, the antidote to feel good history, is not feel bad history, but honest and inclusive history and goes on their inner passage of one of his books that honest history teaches that the good and the bad come together that is one of our collective identity and we have to kind of pay attention to our collective identities so that we can help our country

grow more thoughtful, more tolerant, rather than being an ethnocentric nation. i think what is included in the history book is very important to all of us today so i hope you will enjoy getting are coming to grips with the story and learning about it and then learning about the streak of your community or your state that perhaps is not as well-known either and thank you very much for coming today and i hope we will see you again next year. cspan's work in history tv continues even on full schedule for the weekend under program guide or at cspan.org/history. >> today we are going to talk about the tomb of the unknown soldier and this is the 100th anniversary of the tomb of the unknown soldier, the unknown soldier did in the capitol,