Editor, editorial writer and columnist on the editorial page of the news and observer for 31 years. He will introduce our special guest lease help me welcome jim jenkins. [applause] come on up, zuck. In 1973 i saw him first. Across a loud, profane, filthy newsroom in downtown raleigh. He was right out of school. I was still in school. I looked across and is said to someone, whose that . , thats david zucchino. Is going to be the new star here. He had long, dark hair over his shoulders, a thick jet black mustache. It was a long time ago. [laughing] david is a grad of the unc Journalism School and a member not 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 reporter will submit to his editor every morning and itinerary for his plans for the day. David even then impossible to came, sat down at the old manual typewriter. Its a legendary story. Many of the people who were there remember it. Sad, what i will do today, by david zucchino. 10 15, try to sneak in a little late. 10 40 get a son drop. 11, Start Talking about where to go to lunch. Hes writing all this down. We went to pools diner yesterday but the blue plate special what over four dollars so today we may go to the mecca, all written down. Young editor goes crazy. Goes into the office of claude, the very severe, series editor whod been at the New York Times, waiting the memo, waving the zucchino memo. We cant have this kind of insubordination. Sit down. Sits and looks at it. Got a pipe. Well, i got to be honest with you. Hes one of the best young 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 have got to fire him or we have to fire you [laughing] better start packing. [laughing] zuck was in raleigh, how long . 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 a contract correspondent for the New York Times now. He has been under fire. He has been underwater. It has been quite a career, and you know, the late jimmy bresnan once said of mike royko of the chicago paper when theyre doing a some of his columns and they were trying to get flurried quotes and everything, resident said he is the best, isnt he . Thats all he said. And thats what they say about david zucchino. [applause] thank thank you, jim, for the stories. Were those true . All right. Thank everybody for come out tonight. I really appreciate your interest in the book. I would like to ask how many people have been watching the impeachment hearing . I think they are still going so do i hear a motion to call this whole thing off . We will go to bar and turn on tv and watch impeachment. No motion . Okay. All right. I usually like to start off by asking people how many of you were aware of the wilmington to or massacre what if you want to call it before you came across this book . So most of you. I have to admit i have not heard about this until about 20 years ago. And i went to high school and college in North Carolina, never heard about it, never heard about in history class from any history teacher. When it went to unc many, many years ago i was assigned to the morrison dorm and i assume many of you lived in morrison torbert i had no idea who morrison was. I knew he was a governor. Thats all he knew about him, and years later when im researching this book i find out hes one of the leading speakers on the weitzman c campaign thats a subject of this book in 1898. When i was in school i went to king stadium to watch football games. I didnt know who king was and didnt really care but years later as im researching this book it turns out hes a a character in the book as well. He was a member of one of the machine gun crews that went through town searching out black men to kill. After i left school, as jim told you, i went to the news and observer whose founding publisher was Josephus Daniels, who was revered at the paper. There were tributes to him all around the newsroom. Nobody ever mention that he was the, almost the leader of a a White Supremacy campaign and led the Propaganda Campaign during 1898. I had no idea until i started researching this book. I find that recently the student store at chapel hill is named Josephus Daniels. Im told its one of the buildings on the campus that are named after a white supremacist, many of them are active in the whats up as a 98. 98. And i bring all this up just to make the point that this book isnt really ancient history. Its right now. Its about right now. The legacy of this book is all over the state, all over chapel hill. Some people manage to read the book, i asked them their impressions, and the 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 i can feel its that this is a forgotten chapter in American History, not just north to learn history of 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 1898 white supremacist overthrew the multiracial, in wilmington. They kill up to 60 blackman and they wanted dozens more. They burned down the black did a newspaper in the evicted cd leaders at gunpoint. They appointed a mop leaders as mayor, police chief, sheriff in city alderman. And they vanished 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 period what it mustve been like for the black families who lived in wilmington. Their men were being shot at on the street and gunmen were running through the streets terrorizing people, and hundreds of them fled into the swamps and the cemeteries outside of the city tried to hide on the white gunmen. This was in the literacy can imagine it was called and this happen to be the first day they were there it was raining. There were some reports that babies died of exposure. They with their 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 the coup 2100 black people fled the city never came back. Which would heartedly about all this is no one was ever punished. No one was prosecuted much less convicted for the murders or for the violent coup. Its also hard to believe that they announced it all ahead of time. They said they would overthrow quote, negro rule by the ballot or the bullet or both. They said theyre going to do it and they did it as the whole country watched. Because the announced it will before hand, this would be in the spring and summer and the fault of 1898, all the major newspapers of the day set the White Reporter reporters tend. The New York Times, 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 the white report from out of town would arrive at the train station, the leader of the White Supremacy movement would meet them there and hand up cigars, give them liquor, arrange their lodging. To modern term it would embed them with the white gunmen were going around patrolling the citys. These reports would go out with them never interviewed a black person as far as i can tell, but they would go out and they would swallow the stories that hes gunmen and White Supremacists were telling them that those ths going to be a black riot, blacks would start having weapons, that blacks are incapable of governing, that they didnt have the right to vote and this was reflected, people believed it in his know the newspapers were reflected in the stories that they sent back. So the nation got this whole story that was basically the talking point of the White Supremacists through the white press. Now for a century or more this is called 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 century there had been many, many socalled race riots, and almost all of these were spontaneous outbursts of white rage. And in many cases it involved real or supposed would contact between a black man and a white woman. But one that was unique, completely different, it was premeditated, 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. Why was wilmington such a threat to whites . I think because it was a bold experiment to 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 make cities and stop at a black majority, but more important it had a multiracial government. Blacks were in positions of authority. Ten of the 26 Police Officers were black. Three of the ten city alderman would like to ever black magistrates, black lawyers, merchants doctors, lawyers and that with the daily black newspaper. In 1898 a baptist publication called wilmington the frias 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 the right to vote and the right to hold Public Office forever. By the standards it was an incredibly successful coup. In 1896 there were 126,000 registered black voters in North Carolina, 126,000 in 1906, ten years later, 6100. And it went downhill from there. And, in fact, black citizens in 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 a white supremacist stronghold almost overnight. In 1898 as he said before, wilmington was 56 black anybody have a guess as to what it might be today . Take a guess . Wow, somebody knows, 18 . In 1898 america had one black congressman in the entire country, one black congressman. His name was George Henry Whitee and he was from North Carolina and 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 in North Carolina and be treated as a man. After George Henry White left office in 1900, no black citizens in North Carolina serve in congress until 1992, so almost a century later. Now after those three black aldermen were evicted at gunpoint in 1898 no black citizens are on the Wilmington City Council until 1972. It wasnt that long ago. The coup also installed White Supremacy and jim crow as official state policy for nearly 50 years. It inspired what supremacists across the south. Im going to give you one example. In georgia in 1906 there was a statewide Election Campaign and what supremacists there were 20 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 coup to find out how to do it. Now, the white supremacist government governor who got elected was hope smith and heres a direct quote from him. Core, we can handle the blacks the way they handled them in wilmington, where the woods were black with her hanging carcasses. Carcasses. Not all whites in wilmington white supremacist. In fact, white republican officials worked closely with black officials in large part because the black vote was what helped republicans and populace in office under a government that was called fusion at the time. And some whites helped their black neighbors escape the white gunmen on the day of the coup. But that made them targets. During the summer of 1898, white republicans who were prominent and who receive were seen as wo closely with black officials received some postcards in the mail and they were called quote remember the six and they had a skull and cross bones and a pistol on the it was a death threat. And on the card is said these six men, the sixth leading white republicans of the town, they call them, quote, degenerate sons of the white race and they said the day was coming when they would pay for putting blacks in office, and they would be banished from the town. And as it turned out they were. The mayor, the white mayor, the white police chief, the white federal commission and several white lawyers were marched at gunpoint the day of the coup to the train station, put on the train and said dont come back, we will kill you. Im 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 observer about blacks who would fight whites who attacked them. And for the nearly 25 of white voters who were literate, daniel hired a cartoonist to draw race baiting cartoons. Id like to read a brief passage in the book about the Propaganda Campaign. More than a century before sophisticated fake news attacks targeted social media websites, daniels manipulation of white readers through phone or misleading newspaper stories was perhaps the most daring and effective Disinformation Campaign of the era. The most sensational stories focus on what daniels and other democrats claimed was the black east rape is the estimate of the south dangers understood implicitly the sexual insecurities of white southern males. Already emasculated by union troops who are occupied the town, they raised for the shame if black men were elevated to something approaching equality. A black man who could vote or hold Public Office was in an who might buy their logic become a a rival for the affections of white women. Daniels escalated fatal incidents on the front page. All that was required was incidental contact between a white women and a black man. With each cartoon and with each provocative article, daniels hated whites against blacks. The day was coming, daniels wrote, when white men quote, will take the law into own hands and by organizing force take the negroes behave themselves, closed quote. A race war was inevitable, quote, a clash is surely coming between the races, daniels issued his readers here quote, and in such clashes, the white race is always victorious. Now, White Supremacists had their own fake news and their Media Campaign but they also have their own militias, militia. They were called a redshirt and they were basically an outgrowth of the claim. Many of the men in red shirts were sons are relatives of confederate veterans or former klan members. They were basically a private militia of the White Supremacists. All summer the red shirts job was to write out to the countryside at night, burst into homes, dragged out black men and be thin and with them and tell them they would be killed if the registry vote or dare to vote on election day. And on election day, which is in november of 1898, the intercepted any black man who is trying to get to the polling station and intimidated them and beat them. And by doing so they crashed black turnout that they and stole the election. In addition to the red shirts, there were two state militias in wilmington. The first was the wilmington light infantry and the other was the wilmington naval reserve. These were basically the National Guard of the day. They were supposed to report to the governor in probably, but they were, in fact, commanded by what supremacists and reported to the coup leaders. The militiamen served that summer in the spanishamerican war if you remember the war played out that summer. But the white leaders make sure that they were back in wilmington from the war from the time of the tragic and they plan the coup for two days after the election and then during the coup entering the right that unleashed them on black citizens. On the day of the coup these militiamen were still in federal service. They were federal soldiers because they wouldnt be mustered out for another week or two. So that meant federal soldiers murdered american citizens on the pretext of putting down a black riot. Now, black soldiers also served in the spanishamerican war in segregated units, but white leaders make sure that they were far from wilmington on the day of the coup at a Training Camp in georgia hundreds of miles away. So the left the black community defenseless. Here you have all these young men trained as soldiers, trained in weapons but they were miles away. Now there were defenders of the black immunity and one was named alex who was the black publisher of the daily record. And as a journalist i was really drawn to him. I thought he was a fascinating character. He was a courageous man, just an amazing character. He challenged whites and he demanded c