Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

by David Zucchino

Thomas Clawson, the white reporter, followed a wounded black man from North Fourth and Harnett into a home at 411 Harnett Street. He encountered three distraught black women. On the floor behind them was a black man named Bizell, dead of his wounds. On a bed, Clawson found the owner of the house, George H. Davis, also a black man, bleeding from a gunshot wound to the chest, just above his heart, and another to his left thigh. An embedded bullet was visible just beneath the skin of the man’s chest. Clawson ran his finger over it. Davis opened his eyes and told Clawson that the white men had fired first. Before returning to his reporting on the street, Clawson sent for both a white doctor and a black one, to tend to the wounded man. Davis survived, though Clawson later remarked that “it appeared impossible for one so desperately wounded ever to recover.”