Category: Currently Reading

Wilmington’s Lie
David Zucchino
Grove Atlantic
History, Non-fiction
Pub Date: 1/19/21

I chose this book for my May #dyrc21 History read.  Thank you Grove Atlantic for the gifted copy!

How do we become better when we are always pretending the past never happened?

When reading a book full of hate, I use a bookmark about love.

Back Cover Blurb:
From Pulitzer Prize winner David Zucchino comes a searing account of the Wilmington massacre and the coup of 1898, a rare violent overthrow of an elected government within the United States. By 1898, Wilmington, North Carolina, was a shining example of a mixed-race community. But across the South, white supremacist Democrats were working to reverse the advances made by black citizens.  In North Carolina they devised a coordinated campaign of intimidation and violence that culminated in Wilmington on November 10, 1898, when 2,000 heavily armed white nightriders swarmed through the city, forcing city officials and leading black citizens to flee at gunpoint, terrorizing women and children, and shooting at least sixty black men dead in the streets.

This brutal insurrection halted gains made by blacks in Wilmington and restored racism as official government policy, cementing white rule for another seventy years. Wilmington’s Lie weaves together individual stories of hate and brutality, resulting in a dramatic and definitive account of a forgotten chapter of American history.