Public service and brought you today by your television provider. Good evening, welcome to quail ridge books it is my honor to introduce to you jim jenkins who was an editor, editorial writer and columnist on the editorial page of the news and observer for 31 years your he will introduce our special guest. Please help me welcome jim jenkins. [applause] in 1973 i saw him first, across and loud profane, filthy newsroom in downtown raleigh. He was right at a school. I was still in school. I looked across and is said to someone, whos that . No, thats David Zucchino come hes going to be the new star here. He had long dark hair over his shoulders, thick jet black mustache. It was a long time ago. David is a grad of the unc Journalism School and in in the manatt of the journalism hall of fame. In raleigh he became famous very quickly in the newsroom when a new young editor came in and sent out a memo to the reporting staff saying each reportable submit to his editor every morning and itinerary for his plans for the day. David even then impossible to gain, sat down at the old manual typewriter. Its a legendary story. Many who were there remember it. Said what i will do today, by David Zucchino. 2027488001 mountain pacific tried to sneak in a little eight 2027488001 mountain pacific, sneak in the late. 11, start like about where to go to lunch turkey fighting all this down. We went to the diner yesterday but the blue plate special went over four dollars so today we may go to mecca, all written down. Young editor goes crazy. Goes into the office of claude, they very severe, series editor whod been at the New York Times waving the memo, waving the memo, we can have this kind of insubordination. Sit down. Sit and looks, got a pipe. Well, i got to be honest with you, hes one of the best done reporters ive ever seen. In fact, he may be the best ive ever seen, and i did work for the New York Times. So if we got to fire him, or we got to fire you [laughing] better start packing. [laughing] zucch was in raleigh how long, zucch . Five years in raleigh. Then he was on quickly up the ladder, philadelphia, los angeles, all this as a Foreign Correspondent which he has been contract correspondent for the near times now in kabul. He has been under fire. He has been underwater. It has been quite a career. And you know, the late jimmy once said of mike royko of the chicago paper when theyre doing some of his columns, there were trying to get quotes and everything, he said hes the best, isnt he . Thats all he said. Thats what they say about David Zucchino. [applause] thank you, jim, for those stories. With those true . All right. Thank everybody for come out tonight it i really appreciate your interest in the book. Id like to ask, how many people been watching the impeachment hearings . And i think they are still going so do i hear a motion to call this whole thing off . Will go to bar and turn on the tv and watch the impeachment. No motion . All right. I just like to start off by asking people how many of you were aware of the wilmington coup or massacre would have you want to call it before you came across this book . So most of you. I have to admit i hadnt heard about this until about 20 years ago. I went to high school and college in North Carolina, never heard about it, never heard about in history class, from in history teacher. When he went to unc many, many years ago i was assigned to morrison door. I have no idea who morrison was. I knew he was a governor. Thats all i do about it and then years later when researching this book i find out hes one of the leading speakers on the White Supremacy campaign thats the subject of this book in 1898. When i was in school i went to think stadium to watch football games. I didnt know who king wasnt didnt care but years later as in researching this book it turns out hes a character in my book as well. He was a member of one of the machine gun crew that went through town searching out black men to kill. After i left school, as jim told i went to the news and observer whose founding publisher was Josephus Daniels, who was revered at the paper. There were trivets to all around the newsroom. Nobody ever mentioned that he was almost the lead of the white 70 campaign and led the campaign during 19001898. I died iodide and tele started researching this book. I found out recently that the student store at chapel hill is named josie sith daniels student store. I had no idea. Its one of 30 buildings untold by the Daily Tar Heel on the campus that are named after White Supremacists, many of them were active in the whats offensive movement of 1898. And i bring all this up just to make the point that this book isnt really incan history. Its right now. I mean, its about right now. The legacy of this book is all over the state, all over chapel hill. Some people who managed to read the book, i ask them their impressions and they usually have two questions. First is, how did i not know about this . And the second is, how could this happen in the United States of america . The only thing i can tell you is that this is a forgotten chapter of American History, not just North Carolina history but American History that was covered up or mischaracterized for more than a century. I think most of you know the basic story. Ill go through it quickly. In 1890 white supremacist supremacist overthrew the multiracial government in wilmington. They killed up to 60 black man and he wanted dozens more. They burned down a black daily newspaper and the evicted city leaders at gunpoint. They appointed a mob leaders as mayor, police chief, sheriff in city alderman. And they banished black and white political leaders. They marched them with militiamen at gunpoint to the train station. They put them on the train and said if you ever come back to wilmington we will shoot you onsite. Not one of them ever came back. And you can imagine during this time when it mustve been like for the black families who live in wilmington. Their men were being shot down on the street and gunmen were running through the streets terrorizing people, and hundreds of them fled into the swamps in the cemeteries outside the city trying to hide from the white gunmen. This was in november so you can manage it was cold and the step and be the first day they were there it was raining. There were some reports that babies died of exposure. They were there other terrible conditions and it took them two nights and three days before they felt safe enough to return. And then the days and weeks following the coup, 2100 black people fled the city and never came back. Whats really heartedly about all this is that no one was ever punished. No one was prosecuted much less convicted for the murders or for a violent coup. Its also hard to believe that they announced that all ahead of time. They said they would overthrow, quote, negro rule by the ballot or the bullet, or both. They said they were going to do it and they did it as the whole country watched it because they had announced it will before, and this wouldve been in the spring and summer and fall of 1898, all the major newspapers of the date set or white reporters tend to cover it. The New York Times was there, the washington post, chicago tribune, philadelphia inquirer, baltimore sun, the washington evening star, papers and charlotte and atlanta and, of course, the news and observer. They were all there. When these white reporters from out of town would arrive at the train station the leaders leade whites of rinsing movement would meet them there and handouts or cars, arrange their lodging. To use modern term they would embed them with the white gunmen who were going around patrolling the city. This was before the two and these reports would go out with them, never any good black person as far as i could tell that they would go out and they would swallow the stories that his government and White Supremacists were telling them that theres going to be a black pride, the blacks are stockpiling weapons, the plaques are incapable of governing, tt they didnt have the right to vote. This was reflected if you can believe in these northern newspapers reflected in the stories that they sent back. So the nation got this whole story that was basically the talking points of the White Supremacists to the white press. For a century or more this was called a a quote race riot. It wasnt. It was a racial massacre. It was a planned murder spree. Now in our nations history in the 19th and early 20th centuries thereve been many, many socalled race riots, and almost all of these were spontaneous outbursts of white rage. In many cases it involved real or supposed did contact between a black man and a white woman. But wilmington was unique am completely different. It was premeditated. It was a carefully orchestrated racial revolution planned well in advance. In fact, it was by far the most successful and permanent violent overthrow of an elected government in u. S. History. There has never been anything like it. Now why was wilmington such a threat to whites . I think because it was a bold experiment. Wilmington was really an outlier in the late 19th century. It was a rarity in the south. First of all it was a majority black city. It was 56 black. Very, very, very few exceeded and staff had a black majority but more important it have to multiracial government. Blacks were in positions of authority. Ten of the 26 Police Officers in the city were black. Three of the ten city alderman for blackberry or black magistrates, black lawyers, virgins, doctors and lawyers and there was a daily black newspaper. In 1898 a baptist publication called wilmington the freest town for a negro in the country. Of course this was intolerable to white supremacist and they were not going to let it stand. Now they had a goal. Their first goal was to overthrow the government in wilmington. But that was just their first goal. A bigger goal and their major goal was to deny black people right to vote and the right to hold Public Office forever. And by the standards it was an incredibly successful coup. In 1896 there were 126,000 registered black voters in North Carolina, when hundred 26,000 in 1906, ten years later, 6100 and it went downhill from there. In fact, black citizens of North Carolina did not vote in significant numbers for 70 more years until after the Voting Rights act of 1965. The coup also turn the black majority city into white supremacist stronghold almost overnight. In 1898 as eight as a said before wilmington was 56 black hair anybody have a guess as to what that might be today . Take a guess. Somebody knows. 18 . In 1898 america had one black congressman in the entire country, there was one black congressman. His name was george a new white and he was in North Carolina and he represented a district in southeastern part of the state that was adjacent to wilmington. He was harassed, he and his family were harassed and basically run out of office by White Supremacists. He said in 1900 he was not going to run for reelection. He was leaving the state and his parting words were i cannot live a North Carolina and be treated as a man. And after George Henry White left office in 1900, no black citizen from North Carolina serve in congress into 1992, almost a century later. Now after those three black alderman aldermen were evicted at gunpoint in 1898, no black citizen served on the Wilmington City Council until 1972. It wasnt that long ago. The coup also installed White Supremacy and jim crow as a figure state policy for nearly 50 years. It inspired White Supremacists across the south and let me give you one example. In georgia in 1906 there was a statewide Election Campaign and the White Supremacists were trying to figure out a way to deny blacks the votes and steal the election. What do you think they did . They consulted with the leaders of the wilmington to find out how to do it. Now, the white supremacist governor who got elected was hope smith and heres a direct quote. Oh, we can help of the blacks the way to handle them in wilmington with the words were black with their hanging carcasses, close quote. Not all whites in bulletin wiln were white supremacist. In fact, white republican officials and large part because the black vote was what helped put republicans and populist in office under a government that was called fusion at the time. Some whites helped the black neighbors escape the white gunmen on the day of the coup. That made them targets. During the summer of 1898 white republicans who were prominent and who are seen as working to closely with black officials received some postcards in the mail and they were called quote remember the six they had stolen crossbones and a pistol on them and it was a death threat. On the card it said, these six men, was the six leading white republicans of the town, they called them degenerate sons of the white race, and they said that they was coming when they would pay for putting blacks in office and it would be banished from the town. As it turned out they were. The mayor, the white mayor, the white police chief, white federal commissioner and several white lawyers were marched at gunpoint to the train station, put on the trinkets that dont come back, we will kill you. And not one of them ever came back. The main weapon or one of the main weapons for the White Supremacy campaign was a Fake News Campaign led by none other than Josephus Daniels who planted phony stories in the News Observer about blacks who would fight whites to attack them. And for the nearly 25 of white voters who were illiterate, daniels hired a cartoonist to draw race baiting cartoons. Id like to read a brief passage in the book about the propaganda campaign. David it was a campaign of the era. The most sensational stories but they another democrat takes claiming as a native of the south, daniel understood implicitly the insecurities of white southern males. Already emasculated by union troops have occupied the tables, they were further shamed the blackman were elevated into more equality. A black man who would hold Public Office was a man who might by their logic, become a rival for the affections among women. But then he said the tribulations of the front page. All of those was required was be incidental contact between white women and black men. With each provocative article, daniel pitted whites against blacks. They were becoming, when white man will take the law into their own hands and by organized force, make the negroes behave themselves. A race war was inevitable. Quote, a class is surely becoming between the classes and in such clashes, the white race will win. No White Supremacists have their own fake news in the media campaigns but they also have their own volition. Militia, they were called ridges never basically, the clan many of the men in the ranchers were friends or relatives of confederate veterans are clan members. And theyre basically the private militia of the white supremacist. The richards job was to write out through the paid burst into homes and drag out blackman and beat them and rip them and tell them that they would be killed if they register to vote on election day. And on election day, which was november 1998, the intersected any blackman that was trying to get to the polling station and intimidated them and become and by doing so, they crushed the black turnout the day. Now in addition to the ranchers, they were to state relations. The first was the wellington in country and the other one was the reserves and this was basically the National Guard of the day. They were supposed to report and governor in raleigh but in fact, they were commanded by white supremacist and reported to the coop. The motion then served that summer in the spanishamerican war if you remember, if they know that summer. But the white leaders make sure that they were back in wilmington from the war for the time of this meeting. And then during the coop and the right, on the day of the coop, they were still in federal service. They would not beat mustered out for another week or two. So that meant that federal soldiers murdered citizens on the pretext of putting down the block right. Now blacks also served in the spanish american war pretty white leaders make sure that they were far from wilmington and Training Camp in georgia hundreds of miles away so that left the black community defenseless. You had all these young men trained soldiers but they were miles away. None of work defenders of the black community and one was named alex and he was the back black publisher of the daily record and as a journalist, was really drawn to him i thought it was a fascinating character. He was a righteous man just an amazing character. He challenged whites and demanded civil rights for black screwed he instantly demanded the country live up to its promises to his black citizens. In august of 1998, he wrote an editorial about race and and they had to flee the city than. He wrote the many black men were lynched and for supposedly raping the white women in fact, they were lovers. Nasa pointed out that white man raped black women. This editorial exhuming was in response to a speech by a white woman in georgia is that the only solution to rape was the lunch rope. Quote a thousand times a week if necessary. I would like to renew briefly from the editorial, its fairly long. I will read a short selection from it. Every negro lynched his big burly black brute and when in fact, many of those who hav