Telegraphs had been in use in the United States for half a century, and by the late 1890s telegraph operators were common sights in downtown Wilmington—the gatekeepers of the internet of the day. Visiting white reporters from New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and elsewhere filed their dispatches by telegraph, providing not only moment-to-moment updates but also a nearly unanimous portrayal of the white supremacy campaign as a welcome corrective to corrupt Negro rule. Readers hundreds of miles away kept abreast of events in Wilmington in something approaching real time. A correspondent for the
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