Good evening and welcome to crow ridge books, it is my honor to introduce to you jim jenkins who is editorial writer and columnist on the editorial page of the News Observer for 31 years. He will introduce our special guest, please help me wake welcome jim jenkins caugh. [applause] , on up. In 1973 i saw him first they crossed a loud profane filthy newsroom in downtown raleigh, he was right out of school, i was still in school and i looked across inside to someone who is that and i said that is zucchino and he will be the new star. He had long dark hair over his shoulders and thick jet black mustache and it was a long time ago. David is a grad at the umc Journalism School and a member of the 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 recording stuff saying each reporter will submit to his editor every morning and itinerary for his plans for the day. David even then impossible to tame sat down at the manual typewriter, its a legendary story, many people they remember it. And said what i will do today by david zucchino. 1015 try to sneak in a little late. 1040 get a son drop. 11, Start Talking about where to go to lunch. He is writing all this down. He went to pooles diner yesterday but the blue plate special one over 40. Today we might go to. All written down. Young editor goes crazy. Goes into the office and the very severe serious editor who is that the New York Times waving the memo, we cannot have this kind of insubordination. Sit down. He has a pipe. Well i have to be honest with you. He is one of the best young reporters ive ever seen and he might be the best ive ever seen and i did work for the New York Times. So if we have to fire him or if we have to fire you. [laughter] better start packing. Luke was in raleigh, five years in raleigh and then on quickly up the ladder, philadelphia, los angeles, although this is a Foreign Correspondent which if you been a contract corresponded to the New York Times, he has been under fire, he has been underwater, it has been quite a career. And delete jimmy said of the chicago paper when they were doing a column and trying to get quotes he said he is the best as any. Thats all he said. And thats what they say about david zucchino. [applause] thank you jim for the stories. It is true. Thank you everybody for coming out tonight, i appreciate your interest in the book and i would like to ask how many people have been watching the impeachment hearings. I think they are still going, do i hear a motion to call the whole thing off, we will go to the bar, turn off the tv and watch the emotion. I usually like to start off by asking people, how many of you were aware of the mastic here before you came across this book. So most of you. I have to admit i had not heard about this until about 20 years ago. I went to high school and college in North Carolina and never heard about this in the history class, any history teacher. When i went to unc many years ago i was assigned the morrison dorm, maybe some you also live there. I had annoyed you who morrison was and i knew he was a governor and thats all i knew about it, years later when a research is book i find out hes one of the needing speakers on the White Supremacy campaign which is the subject of this book in 1988. When i was in school i went to king stadium to watch football games. I did not know who he was and i really did not care. But years later as a research the book it turns out hes a character in my book as well. He is a member of the machine gun crew that went through town searching out black and to kill. After i left school as jim told you, i went to the observer whose founding publisher was the chief of daniels who was reviewed at the paper and there were tributes to him all around the newsroom. Nobody ever mentioned that he was the leader of the White Supremacy campaign and let the Propaganda Campaign between 1898, i had no idea until he researched the book. I found out recently that the student at capitol hill and had no idea. It is one of 30 buildings im told by the daily power heel on the campus that are named after white supremacist and many of them who were active in the White Supremacy movement of 1898. I bring all this up to make a point that this book is not really into history. It is right now. Its about the legacy of the book all over the state and chapel hill. Some people who managed to read the book, i asked for their impressions and they usually have two questions. First, how did i not know about this. In the second, how can this happen in the United States of america. The only thing ive been telling is 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 quickly, 1898 white supremacist overthrew the multiracial government in wilmington. They killed up to 60 black men and wounded dozens more. They burn down the black daily newspaper and evicted city leaders at gunpoint. They appointed the bob leaders as mayor, police chief and sheriff. And they banished black and white political leaders, they marched them with militiamen at gunpoint to the train station, they put him on the train and said if you ever come back to wilmington we will shoot you outside and not one of them came back. And you can imagine during this period what it mustve been like for the black family who lived in wilmington and remember being shut down on the street and the gunmen running through the street terrorizing people and hundreds of them flood into the swamps in the cemetery outside the city trying to hide from the white government. This was in november you can imagine it was cold and happen to be the first date was there was raining, there were some reports that babies died of exposure. They were there under terrible conditions and it took them two nights and three days before they felt safe enough to return. And in the days and weeks following, 2100 black people fled the city and never came back. What is really hard to believe about all of this is no one was ever punished. No one was prosecuted much less convicted for the more untrue murders or the violent coup. They announced it all ahead of time. They said they would overthrow neither rule by the ballot or both, they said they would do it and they didnt. So the whole country watched. Since they announced it will before and this was in the spring, summer and fall of 1898, all the major newspapers said their white reporters wanted them to cover, New York Times, washington post, chicago tribune, the adelphia inquire, the baltimore sun, the washington evening star, atlanta and enforce the news and observer. They were all there. When his wife reported him from out of town at the train station, the leader of the White Supremacy unit would leave him there, handle cigars, give him liquor, arrange their lodging to use a modern term they would embed them with the white government who is going around patrolling the citys in these reporters would go out with them, never interviewed a black person as far as i can tell but they would go out and swallow the stories of these governments and White Supremacists were telling them that there will be a black writer and black were stockpiling weapons and blacks are incapable of governing they did and how have the right to vote and this was reflected in the northern newspapers and reflected in the stories that are think back. The nation got the whole story that was basically the talking point of the white supremacist to the white press. In First Century it was not. It was a massacre, it was a planned murdered spree. In our nations history in 19 early 20 centuries there were many socalled race riots. Almost all of these were spontaneous outburst of white rage. In many cases and involved real or contact between a black man in a white woman. But it was unique, is completely different, is premeditated, carefully orchestrated racial revolution planned well in advance. 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. Why was wilmington such a threat to watch. I think it was a bold experiment, one was an outlier in the late 19th century, a rarity in the south and first of all it was a majority of black city, 66 black and very few big cities in the south have a black majority. More importantly how to multiracial government waxwing to position of authority. Three of the ten were black. The black magistrates, black lawyers, doctors and lawyers in the daily black newspaper. In 1898 a publication called wilmington the freeze time for any growth in the country, of courses is intolerable to White Supremacists and they will not let it stand. Now they had a goal, the first goal was to overturn the government in wilmington. That was just their first goal. There was a bigger goal in a major goal was to deny black people the right to vote in the right to hold Public Office forever. By those standards it was an incredibly successful coup. In 1986 there were 126,000 registered voters in North Carolina, 126,000, 19 06, ten years later, 6100. It went downhill from there. In fact black citizens in North Carolina did not vote a significant number for 70 more years until after the Voting Rights act of 1965. It also turned the black majority into a White Supremacists almost overnight. In 1898 as i said before, it was about 66 black, anybody have a guess of what it might be today . [laughter] 18 . In 1898 america had one black congressman in the entire country and his name was george hindering white and he was from North Carolina. He represented his district in the southeastern part of the state that was adjacent to wilmington. He was harassed, him and his family were harassed and ran out of office by supremacists so he said in 1900 he was not going to run through the election, he was leaving the steam parting words that i cannot live in North Carolina and be treated as a man. After George Henry White left office in 1900, no black citizens in North Carolina serving congress until 1992. After the three black aldermen were evicted at gunpoint in 1988, no black citizens seller on the city council until 1972. It was not that long ago. It also installed White Supremacy and jim crow as official state policy for nearly 50 years. It inspired weiser premises across the south, let me give you one example. In georgia in 19 06 with her was a statewide Election Campaign in the weiser premises were trying to figure out a way to deny blacks to vote and still the election. They consulted with the leaders of the Wilmington Group to figure out how to do it. Now the weiser premises governor who got elected and he is in a direct quote, we can handle the black the way they handled them in wilmington where the woods was black with her hanging carcasses. Not all likes and wilmington were white supremacist. White republican officials but because of the black vote what help put republicans in office. Some wipe whites help them escae government. But that made them targets, during the summer of 1988 white was prominent and seen as working too closely with black officials received postcards in the mail and they were called remembered the sick and they had of bone and a pistol. It was a doctor. On the card they said these six men, the republicans of the town called and the generous funds of the white race. And they said that they were coming when they would pay for putting blacks in office and they would be benefiting from the town. As it turned out, they were, the white mayor, the white police chief, the white federal commissioners and several white lawyers were marched at gunpoint to two train stations, put on the train and said do not come back, we will kill you and not one came back. The main weapon for the White Supremacy campaign was a Fake News Campaign led by daniels who played with blocks to a fight whites and attack them. In the nearly 25 of voters who were illiterate, they required cartoonist as cartoons. I would like to read a passage from the book about the propaganda pam pain. More than a century before since desiccated steak news, targeted social media website, dinos manipulation of white readers through phony or misleading newspapers was perhaps the most daring and effective Disinformation Campaign of the era. The most sensational stories focused on what daniels and other democrats claim to have the black beast races. In the native emasculated by troops who had occupation their towns, with bachmann were elevated to something approaching equality. A black man who can vote or hold Public Office was a man who might, bathe a logic, become a writer for the affections of white woman. His turbulent incident went to our ages, was required was incidental content between a white woman in a black man. With each cartoon and with each provocative article, the day was coming daniels wrote in the new entry news exerted for in the white mans will take the law in their own hands and organize force meet the negroes behave themselves. They were the private militia of the White Supremacists. All summer job was to write out through the countryside at night, drag out black men and beat them and with them and told them they would be killed if they register to vote and on election day whic day which is e november of 1898 they intercepted any black man who was trying to get to the polling station and intimidated and beaten them and by doing so, they crushed the turnout that they stole the election. In addition to the red shirts there were two state militias in wilmington. First was the Naval Reserve and these were basically the National Guard of the day they were supposed to report to the governor and rally the. They served in the spanishamerican war if you remember it played out at summer but they made sure they were back in wilmington from the war and they have planned for two days after the election. On the pretext of putting down the block right. They also served in the spanishamerican war and segregated union but they made sure that they were far from wilmington on the day of the coup at the Training Camp in georgia hundreds of miles away so that left the community defenseless and here you have all these young men trained in soldiers and weapons but they were miles away. Now there were defenders of the black community and one was named alex manley. As a journalist i was drawn to him. I thought he was a fascinating character and a courageous man, just an amazing character. He challenged them in print and demanded civil rights and eventually demanded that the country live up to its promises to the citizens. In august of 1898, he wrote in an incendiary editorial about race and almost got him lynched. He wrote many men lynched for the women that were in fact consensual and also pointed out that the rate white women with impunity. This editorial was in response to a speech by a white woman in georgia. Every negro lynched is called a big burly black fruit, and in fact many of those that have nothing dealt with headlight and for their father and for not only black and burly that were sufficiently attractive for white girls with culture and climate to fall in love with them and very wellknown tool. And amidst the worst to be intimate with a white woman angry white man to be intimate with a colored woman. You set yourselves down as he was for the kurds in the queue cry aloud for the virtue while you seek to destroy the morality of hours. People have asked me how he researched this book. There are no witnesses left from 1898. I spent a lot of time in libraries boast significantly at the Wilson Library and the Southern Historical collection. They were proud of their accomplishments and they bolstered about it and memoirs and diaries and letters and newspaper columns. There were some rich and detailed. But blacks left behind fewer documents and the daily record was burned and they find those copies now. There were newspapers around the country that obviously couldnt send reporters to wilmington to cover these because of the very least they would have been beaten and run out of town and probably killed. But after the two win over these families spread around the country mostly on the eastern seaboard, the newspapers would interview them and get some very rich and detailed stories, very fresh stories about what had happened so that was a great resource for me. In addition, there were ministers and lawyers that left an interesting memoir and incredible details. One of the great sources i have are these beautiful letters to her son in the 1950s that are playing into reed and i quote some of these in the book. I was able to balance the narrative with the experience and what i tried to do also is to put myself in as a journalist in 1898 and tried to use the tools as a novelist to create a narrative that still felt from the documents. This isnt a historical fiction book. Everything comes from documents into the work of journalism and it is in fake news to use a popular term of the day. First is the speech given by colonel alford, he is a former congressman and newspaper editor and former confederate colonel who led the mob and installed themselves as mayor. And again, this is the night before the election when they gave the speech. The crisis is upon us. The city,